Power restoration could take 'weeks' after Vic outage after storm

One of the largest power outages in Victorian history could take weeks to fully fix after wild storms hit the State, knocking down lines.

Hundreds of power poles and lines were downed and six transmission towers nearby collapsed on Tuesday, sending all four units at the Loy Yang A coal-fired power station offline.

At its peak, 529,000 properties were without power due to the damage from storms, strong winds and lightning.

That number had dwindled to 260,000 late on Tuesday but the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action warned progress could be slow.

“Crews are actively working to restore power to these impacted areas,” the department said.

“However, given the extent of the widespread damage, it may take days if not weeks to restore electricity to all of those impacted.”

Load shedding pushed spot power prices to $16,600 per MW-hour in Victoria and Tasmania, hundreds of times higher than typical levels.

Traffic lights were also impacted by the outage.

“This has been one of the largest outage events in the state’s history,” Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neill, who represents the Melbourne electorate of Hotham, said it was surprising so many homes lost power.

“There’s some really important questions to ask and answer here about how it’s possible that a country like Australia can lose power for 500,000 people because of a storm,” she told Seven’s Sunrise program on Wednesday.

“But I do think those questions are for later.”

Tuesday was a scorcher for multiple states, but Victoria suffered the worst with temperatures surpassing 40C in some parts and thunderstorms swept the state starting fires.

A catastrophic fire danger rating was declared for some parts of Victoria on Tuesday, the first since the deadly Black Summer of 2019-20.