Vulnerability assessments used to turn the power back on
As communities become more reliant on electricity, understanding where to prioritise investment is essential for power companies like Powercor.
The Australian Disaster Resilience Index (ADRI) is being used by an energy company in Victoria to prioritise which communities to provide with emergency power during natural hazards.
Craig Savage, head of Network Climate Adaptation and Resilience at Powercor, says there are hundreds of small regional and remote communities across the state that are vulnerable to power outages lasting several days during an extreme weather event.
That’s a significant and growing problem. Most Victorian homes and businesses rely on electricity for power; in an emergency, it’s used for telecommunications, pumping fuel and powering essential services in homes, businesses, health and aged care facilities.
As part of its efforts to increase resilience, Powercor plans to supply some of these townships with quick connection points for generators. But, with more than 100 potential recipients, it needed to understand which would benefit most.
Rather than prioritise communities based purely on the number of people impacted in an outage, Powercor used ADRI to understand which were highly vulnerable.
With this information and a range of other inputs, it prioritised 20 communities for which it made a business case for investment to the energy regulator.
If approval is obtained, Powercor will install connection points so that emergency generators can be quickly delivered during an event.
"We could turn up with a generator on a semi-trailer and supply maybe the pub and half the town with power. It would mean the community could still operate while our team repair any damage and restore power to the main network," Mr Savage says.
"The loss of electricity means loss of lots of other services, and with more frequent and more severe storms that may affect supply, this is quite a significant piece of work for those communities involved."
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