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

There are now about 24,700 customers remaining without power across the network – down from a peak of 165,000 yesterday morning.

We are focused on restoring power to a significant number of these homes and businesses today, with further restoration work to continue tomorrow.

Friday’s storm caused extensive and widespread damage across Melbourne’s south eastern suburbs and the Mornington Peninsula. Crews are still responding to more than 2000 faults, including 1000 fallen wires, and we are still receiving reports of further damage.

Work includes complex and challenging reconstruction of significantly damaged power infrastructure in Red Hill, Sorento and surrounding areas.

This has been a difficult situation for many of our customers and we do thank them for their patience as we work around the clock to repair the damage and restore power safely.

We acknowledge some customers have been frustrated at the length of time they have been without power and the changes in estimated restoration times.

The reason why estimated restoration times can shift is once a crew attends a site and assesses what is involved in restoring power.

Often a job will be more complex than initially reported or crews will be called to another urgent job that needs to be prioritised for safety reason and this can impact estimated restoration time.

At all times, we will endeavour to keep estimated restoration times updated.

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 will keep customers updated on estimated restoration times on the outage map at www.unitedenergy.com.au