Power outages not impacting Ocean Sounds Festival

MORE than 5000 Ausnet customers in three Bass Coast areas were without power on Saturday morning as a result of an overnight storm involving strong winds and thousands of lightning strikes.

However, while San Remo, Newhaven, Cape Woolamai and Churchill Island were without power this morning, it’s full steam ahead for the 9th Ocean Sounds Music Festival, with gates open at 12 noon.

“These music events are completely self-sufficient as far as services are concerned, including power,” said one of the festival organisers Aiden McLaren.

“So, apart from not being able to have a shower at home this morning, it’s all good for today,” he said.

“As I understand it, the power is off to the café, but we’re fine. We’re looking forward to a great day,” he said.

With 6000 tickets sold, it’s set to be the biggest Ocean Sounds Festival to date headlined by the Teskey Brothers who hit the stage at 6.40pm with the ‘Welcome to Country’ starting the day at 1.10pm.

But elsewhere, the power outage was causing problems for business operators in particular trying to cater to a holiday crowd.

According to Ausnet spokesperson Karen Winsbury, speaking on ABC Radio this morning, the faults in the affected areas are still being assessed and it may take time to restore power where there has been damage caused to the system by lightning strikes and fallen trees.

Reports were of 32,000 customers out in the Ausnet service area, including the fire zones, but with a significant number of those in Bass Coast as follows:

• 744 Glen Alvie to Outtrim area including Kongwak and Glen Alvie
• 2192 Woolamai area impacting Coronet Bay, Kilcunda and Wonthaggi North
• 2397 Dalyston to Surf Beach affecting San Remo, Newhaven and Cape Woolamai

“Yeah, just over 32,000 customers or there abouts and about 8000 of those are in the fire affected zones but we can't currently access that area. So, restoration for those 8000 customers or sites is going to be in the coming days,” said Ms Winsbury.

“Unfortunately, we also had a storm run through our network between 2am and 4am this morning, lots of lightning, storm, and wind activity that's also caused damage to assets, so a whole bunch of new faults over the night.

“In fact, there were some 24,000 lightning strikes in Victoria in the last 24 hours. So that gives you a sense of how tricky things have been.

“We’ve got over 200 people out in the field right now, and some really good crews available for the whole weekend. We've had people working through the night, of course, and we were actually able to restore 1000s of faults overnight, which is good news, but there's more reports of faults coming in, so yeah, it's tough work out there.

“I spoke to our control room this morning, and they have either crews deployed in the field, heading to sites, or they're on site now. So, we have people heading out to those jobs. We'll keep our Outage Tracker up to date with restoration times as we know it.

“There's going to be some damage, though, so we're going to need to remove vegetation off power lines and possibly do some rebuilding of power poles and the like, that tends to take a little bit longer.”

Stay up to date with the Ausnet Outage Tracker HERE

So, while there’s plenty of inconvenience, it’s full steam ahead for the eagerly awaited Ocean Sounds Festival at Churchill Island where it’s gates open at 12 noon.