19 June 2020

Load shedding avoided thanks to Canberra community rallying to reduce electricity

| My Gungahlin
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ActewAGL has confirmed that it will not be required to conduct rolling blackouts across Canberra tonight after households, businesses as well as ACT and Federal government agencies rallied to help reduce the ACT’s demand.

ActewAGL General Manager Energy Networks Stephen Devlin has thanked the community for the overwhelming response to the supply emergency.

“The combined proactive effort of everyone across Canberra, particularly our large commercial customers, enabled ActewAGL to sufficiently reduce load across the ACT to meet the requirements of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and do ‘our bit’ to help stabilise the network,” said Stephen.

“Unless there are unforeseen circumstances that further impact electricity generation overnight, it’s unlikely we would be required to conduct rolling blackouts during the weekend.

“We had a couple of unplanned outages this afternoon impacting Fraser, Melba, Spence and Duffy and crews are working as quickly and safely as possible to get the power back on,” said Stephen.

ActewAGL remains on alert and will continue to closely monitor the local network’s capacity to meet demand into tomorrow and Sunday.

“We ask that customers continue to be vigilant and minimise their electricity consumption as much as possible while we work through this heatwave.

“The critical factor for tomorrow is the extreme temperature combined with forecast high winds in the afternoon gusting to more than 40kms per hour.

“The safety of the community is our number one priority, so if tomorrow’s winds result in damage to powerlines or cause trees to bring down powerlines, please stay well clear and report it to ActewAGL,” he said.

For urgent enquiries or to report a fault please call 13 10 93.

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