Update – 22 January 2025
Ausgrid crews are expected to restore power today to the last remaining customers who were impacted by the storms.
The utility’s crews have door-knocked more than 200 homes across northern Sydney to provide face-to-face updates and support to affected customers.
Ausgrid thanked the Accredited Service Providers and Essential Energy crews that assisted over the past two days and acknowledged the patience and support from the community as it safely finalises complex restoration works in the last remaining locations.
Update – 21 January 2025
All 110 Endeavour Energy customers and 6800 Ausgrid customers who remain without power have been restored, with Ausgrid working to reconnect the remaining 1700 customers as quickly and safely as possible.
Around 1300 of those are in Sydney and 400 are across the Central Coast, Newcastle and Hunter regions.
Ausgrid thanked the community for it’s patience and it continues to complete complex restoration work in the last remaining locations.
20 January 2025
More than 300,000 customers are now back online after two waves of storms swept across New South Wales.
Violent electrical storms late on Wednesday 15 January damaged energy infrastructure and brought down trees and powerlines, before gale-force winds hit on Friday 17 January.
Energy crews and the New South Wales State Emergency Service volunteers are working hard to connect the remaining 8600 customers who are still without power.
Since the storms began, the SES has received more than 8700 call outs, with many incidents involving live powerlines. Crews will continue responding to incidents over the next few days.
At the height of Wednesday’s storms 226,000 customers lost power, and on Friday, more than 70,000 were disconnected. Some homes and businesses were hit by both weather systems.
While power has been restored to the vast majority thanks to the work of SES volunteers and Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy and Essential Energy workers, the severity of the damage has caused some prolonged outages. Some of these jobs have required complete rebuilds of parts of the network, which have taken several days to complete. Some are in isolated locations.
Ausgrid is advising customers that some outages will continue into Monday 20 and Tuesday 21 January. Essential Energy workers are now supporting Ausgrid in its clean up and restoration efforts.
As of 6:00am Monday 20 January, around 8600 homes and business across New South Wales were without power.
More than 200,000 Ausgrid customers have been impacted by the storms, and 8500 are still without power:
- 1,500 in Newcastle/Hunter, including 350 in Port Stephens
- 1,000 Central Coast
- 6,000 in Sydney
Endeavour Energy has around 100 customers without power in Sydney. This is down from a total of 78,000 Endeavour Energy customers impacted by the storms.
Essential Energy has restored all power outages from the storms. A total of 31,500 Essential Energy customers were impacted.
The New South Wales Government said that the safety of the community and energy crews is the number one priority as crews work to get the power back on, and urged residents to follow these safety measures:
- Always assume a fallen wire is live and dangerous, stay at least 8m clear of them
- Avoid wires that are hanging low, on the ground or tangled in trees and storm debris
- Never drive across fallen powerlines
- Report fallen powerlines immediately by calling your electricity distributor
- If you’re using a portable generator for power, avoid deadly exhaust fumes entering your home
- If you have an emergency, call Triple 0 (000) or the Police Assistance Line on 131 444 for non-urgent matters
The Federal and New South Wales governments have confirmed a Natural Disaster Declaration for select local government areas affected by these storms, and more assessments are underway.
The State Government is also waiving the waste levy in many affected local government areas to speed up recovery efforts and reduce the financial burden on households and businesses.
Affected customers should contact their electricity distributor to see if further support is available. For example, Ausgrid customers may be eligible for up to $250 from Ausgrid to cover food spoilage due to power outages.
New South Wales Minister for Energy, Penny Sharpe, said, “It has been a massive task to restore power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses since these wild storms hit, and we thank the SES volunteers and energy crews who have worked around the clock to make it happen.
“This important but difficult work is still going. There are customers who are still without power, and we know that is incredibly difficult. Crews are working as hard as possible to reconnect everyone.”
New South Wales Minister for Emergency Services, Jihad Dib, said, “The situation is challenging for communities and emergency responders, but we have also seen the best in people and from our incredible emergency response volunteers and personnel.
“The New South Wales State Emergency Service and other first responders, including Fire and Rescue NSW, the NSW Rural Fire Service and VRA Rescue NSW, have made a mammoth effort to help communities get back on their feet during these difficult times.
“The New South Wales Government is working with councils and communities to provide support where it is needed, with joint federal and state funding already available for some LGAs and assessments well underway for others.”
Featured image: Endeavour Energy
