Power outages across Melbourne’s south eastern suburbs and the Mornington Peninsula (1/3)

United Energy crews are working to restore power to more than 140,000 homes and businesses as extreme winds continue to cause extensive damage to the electricity network.

Severe winds and gusts of more than 100kmh have brought down trees and branches onto powerlines, and damaged poles and other infrastructure across Melbourne’s south eastern suburbs and Mornington Peninsula.

Crew are currently responding to more than 500 fault events, including reports of more than 120 fallen wires.

While crews are restoring power, the persistent strong winds are continuing to cause additional power faults.

While extra crews have been mobilised to get power back onto homes as safely and as quickly as possible, the extensive damage makes it difficult for us to provide firm estimated restoration times for when all power is expected to come back on.

As crews are responding, we are still receiving reports of damage and fallen powerlines. In some cases, customers could be without power over the weekend.

We do understand many people are working and studying from home at this time, and thank them for their understanding as we work to respond to these outages.

Customers are reminded to be aware of fallen powerlines. If people do see a fallen powerline, they should always stay well away from them and report them to us immediately on 132 099.

We are also experiencing high call volumes into our customer centre and this is leading to longer wait times than usual.

We would encourage customers to only contact the call centre for emergency situations. We will keep customers updated on estimated restoration times on the outage map at https://outagemap.unitedenergy...