Residents of Fernleigh Park, near Googong, have been experiencing a lack of serious reliability in their electricity supply. Over the last month, properties in the area have been without power on at least four occasions, for up to 16 hours each time.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
A total of 106 properties in the area are understood to have been impacted. Essential Energy crews have been working to address the problem, but are yet to provide a permanent solution.
Local resident Colleen Krestensen, speaking on behalf of the Fernleigh Committee said, “We feel that the electricity infrastructure in our community has been allowed to deteriorate. Clearly there is a serious system problem causing so many serious outages and better preventive maintenance is required.”
Residents of the area include people who rely on electricity for medical equipment such as breathing apparatus. For these people, the problem is extremely serious and could endanger their lives.
The prolonged power outages have also resulted in food spoilage, damage to electrical equipment and loss of pets and stock, such as baby chickens in incubators for tropical fish. Many residents rely on water tanks and electrical water pumps, the outages have also denied them access to running hot and cold water, showers and toilets.
“Being without lights or heating repeatedly in the middle of winter is not acceptable. This sort of recurring outage would never be tolerated in a suburb. Rural residents also are required to pay higher electricity rates,” Ms Krestensen said.
Residents are also concerned that this comes after the construction of the Essential Energy power sub-station for Googong township, which locals feel is an eye-sore, at the entrance to the Fernleigh Park Estate on Old Cooma Road.
This was built in view of residences without consultation with the community. Essential Energy undertook to plant mature trees to block the highly industrial look of the sub-station, which spoils the rural character of the area. The company instead used saplings in place of more mature trees, a problem it has now promised to resolve.
An Essential Energy representative said: “The electricity network has inbuilt protection systems that activate automatically when there is a possibly hazardous imbalance detected. At Fernleigh Park, an earth protection breaker is activating which normally occurs when the electricity is provided with a path to earth not designed to exist. Local staff completed extensive inspections of hardware located at the top of each pole to satisfy themselves the electricity was safe to reenergise.”
