Bushfire prevention
With a focus on customers and community safety, we undertake comprehensive pre-summer bushfire inspections and vegetation management. 
Maintaining safety for bushfire season
Almost half of our network is in an area classified as Bushfire Zone by the Rural Fire Service (RFS).
Our team undertakes thorough prevention work to keep our customers and community safe particularly during bushfire seasons.
We’ll conduct inspections to decide if work is required to reduce the risk of vegetation contacting overhead powerlines, whether it be via tree growth, or branches and vegetation falling.
We apologise in advance, for any interruption to your power supply while we undertake this work. We understand the importance of ongoing power supply, and we will undertake all work quickly and safely to restore power as soon as practicable.
Important things to consider during bushfire prevention works
- If you’re a life support customer, please activate your back-up plan immediately. If you are not currently registered for life support and require power for the use of medical devices, please call 131 003 to commence the registration process
- Once power supply is lost, automatic garage doors will not open. It is always good to know how to manually open, close and safely secure your garage door in case of a loss of power
- Some of the trucks used to repair electricity infrastructure are large and we may be forced to park across driveways to enable safe access to complete the work required. Talk to our crew when they arrive on site if you need access to your vehicle, they will work with you to find a suitable time
- Should there be adverse weather, the job may be rescheduled to another date. We know this is difficult where customers have made alternative arrangements, however our crew is unable to work on live wires during heavy rain or very strong winds
- In rural areas, access to private property may be required for repairs, safety inspections or switching activities. Please give our staff access - your power supply may not be interrupted but access to a pole on your property may be required to restore supply to others
- In rural areas, loss of power often results in loss of water. If you require power for water pumps at your property, please consider alternate power generation (i.e. petrol generators) or alternate water supplies for the duration of the outage.
- If you have biodiversity risk associated with your property, please let us know by calling 131 003
What our teams do
- We use drones as a quieter way of inspecting the lines with less of an impact on our customers, as drones directly follow powerlines, reducing the need to fly above properties and farmland
- Using high-resolution cameras and advanced sensors, our drones conduct detailed inspections with greater accuracy and speed, even in hard-to-reach areas
- The drone's technology ensures that it only captures pictures of our electrical assets - and not of surrounding properties
- We use data collected from these flights, to identify all network and vegetation defects which could result in network breakdowns or trees touching power lines
- To ensure our network remains safe and reliable, we will rectify all identified defects before the start of the bushfire season
- In many cases, we’ll need to enter rural properties where the mains run through, to undertake this work
