KAREN Winsbury, GM Communications and Brand at AusNet Services spoke on Gippsland ABC Radio this morning confirming that 40,000 customers in Gippsland are still without power.
Among them are parts of Leongatha, Korumburra, areas around Bass and advice this morning that Cape Paterson is off again.
Communications to these towns is poor and the AusNet outage tracker map isn’t working properly.
She also assured customers in the affected areas that they will receive “automatic rebates on their bills” due to the loss of power impacting food losses and the like.
For example, if you have more than 18 hours of unplanned sustained interruptions per financial year you get a rebate of $130. It’s higher for longer outages.
You may also be entitled to compensation for damage to your equipment or property, if it’s caused by a voltage variation event.
See Ausnet website claims: https://www.ausnetservices.com.au/outages/claims
“We've got currently about 40,000 customers across Gippsland that are without power. We are making steady progress on those outages but let me just say, a big apology to those customers who are still without power,” Ms Winsbury said.
“I know it's really difficult, but I can assure you that we have people working day and night to clear the debris and get the powerlines back up safely and quickly.”
Asked if she could say when separate areas would be restored, she said no.
“I don't have the individual details. But what I can tell you is that we're focusing on those areas where we can get the most amount of customers up at once.
“Overnight customers should have received a text message from us which would give us an estimated restoration time.
“There will be, across our entire network, about 75,000 who are still without power, and we should have about 48,000 of those back on today by 6pm.
“There'll be another group that we will then progressively work through, about 50,000, but actually those numbers don't add up because we've made progress overnight, but there'll be another group that will be done by Saturday 6pm.
“Unfortunately, those people who live in really remote areas, kind of at the end of the line, they're going to take the longest to get to and that's in part because of the difficulty of actually reaching them but also that we're focusing on getting the most amount of customer back on.”
And will customers get an automatic rebate on their bills without having to apply?
“Yes, absolutely they will. So, people that are without power, they're what's called guaranteed service levels. This automatically qualified people that have been out. People will see that in their next quarterly bill from their electricity retailer, that a credit has been applied,” Ms Winsbury said.
