Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal investigates recent power outage at Broken Hill and surrounding areas

The tribunal overseeing energy prices in New South Wales is investigating whether power infrastructure company Transgrid failed to provide a reliable supply to residents in the far west after a second outage within a week.

Power has been progressively restored in Broken Hill, Wilcannia and Menindee overnight as the NSW government on Tuesday announced an inquiry into how the community was left without backup electricity.

Severe weather and a possible tornado knocked down seven transmission towers last week, leaving residents in Broken Hill and outlying towns without electricity for about two days and intermittent supply over the weekend.

On Monday, the town's only working backup generator "overheated" and shut down, causing a second blackout.

NSW Premier Chris Minns previously said that one of two backup emergency generators for the region stopped working about 12 months ago, before the second failed on Monday.

He told ABC News Breakfast that residents in the state's far-west region had been let down by the previous state government's decision to privatise electricity assets.

"Once this utility was privatised by the previous government there was meant to be rules in place so that for regional communities if they were knocked out as a result of a weather event or a natural disaster they had enough contingencies in place to keep the power going in those communities — that hasn't happened," he said.

Energy Minister Penny Sharpe said the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) has began "a serious investigation" into whether Transgrid has breached the reliability standards included in its licence.

"This is what happens when you privatise, and you throw something into the national market, and you just leave it there. What you find is people prioritise profit over doing the work that needs to be undertaken," Ms Sharpe said.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Transgrid said claims that one of its backup generators had been out of service since November 2023 were "not correct".

"The generator currently out of service in Broken Hill was operational before being taken offline for refurbishment in September 2024," they said.

The spokesperson said the second generator that went offline on Monday has been repaired and is operational.

They said additional generators were being installed to "supplement supply" to the area while emergency works will ramp up to repair the storm-damaged powerline.

"Transgrid is focused on completing construction of the new temporary powerline as soon as possible to restore a permanent electricity supply to Broken Hill and surrounding communities," they said.

"Transgrid apologises to residents and businesses for the prolonged outage caused by a fault to the backup generator and acknowledges the significant impacts on local communities."

Earlier on Wednesday, Ms Sharpe said it would be weeks before long-term repairs could be completed on the "mangled" towers damaged during the storm.

"It is challenging, and Essential [Energy] is also putting in place another 75 generators so look, everything is being thrown at this but there's probably another 24 hours of big challenges.

"We think it's unacceptable this town's been left without backup generation, and we want to be holding people accountable for that but look we need to get the electricity up and running and we need to get those towers repaired, we obviously then will get to the bottom of how this happened in the first place."

She said the community may encounter "short load shedding, which is blackouts for small groups of people for a short period of time" while the infrastructure is being fixed.

Broken Hill mayor Tom Kennedy said the town, like many rural NSW towns, had aging infrastructure that failed to cope in emergency situations.

"I would hope this sends a message to the state government and Transgrid to make sure they do keep everyone's essential infrastructure for electricity up to some sort of standard that means it will meet what's required when it is needed."

"Everyone in the community was worried that that 24 hours would end up four, five, six days and people were starting to panic."

Telecommunication services at Broken Hill have been brought back online after Monday's power outage, with connection expected to return to the remaining far west towns within 24 hours.

Telstra regional general manager, Michael Marom, said additional crews from Dubbo have been deployed to get services up and running again as quickly as possible.

A NSW education department spokesperson said schools had been supporting affected HSC students, but any decision to postpone exams would lie with the NSW Education Standards Authority who set the exam timetable.

The NSW government has signed off on a natural disaster declaration, with funding available to help local councils with the costs of the clean-up.

Electricity supply restored in SA

SA Power Networks says power has been restored about 1,600 customers in Quorn, Leigh Creek and the main township of Hawker after extreme weather last week.

It says some affected customers had been supplied with mobile generators.

Thursday's storm left more than 36,000 South Australians without electricity.