Victoria power outage: Blackouts persist amid clean-up from destructive storms

544,000 lightning strikes within a 600 km radius of Melbourne between 9am and 9pm AEDT on Tuesday this week. Photo / Weatherzone

Hundreds of thousands of Victorians have spent a second night without power after destructive storms wreaked havoc on the energy grid.

About 127,000 homes and businesses remained disconnected from electricity networks as of Wednesday evening, down from a peak of 530,000 following damage from storms, strong winds and lightning.

Crews have been working through the night to clear debris and repair damaged powerlines to try to reconnect the properties in the state’s east.

But given the extent of the damage, it could take days or more than a week to restore electricity to those impacted, the Australian Energy Market Operator said.

Electricity network crews have worked throughout Wednesday to restore power to thousands of homes and businesses following yesterday’s severe storms.

As at 5pm, about 125,000 properties are still without power in Victoria, down from about 250,000 at 9am and a peak of more than…

— DEECA Victoria (@DEECA_Vic) February 14, 2024

The disaster is one of the largest power outages in Victorian history and could take weeks to fully fix.

Victoria’s State Emergency Service received more than 4000 calls for assistance as of 4pm on Wednesday, with that number expected to climb.

A dairy farmer was killed after being struck by debris while herding cows on a quad bike in Darlimurla in South Gippsland.

Five regional hospitals could remain on generator power for at least three days as authorities rush to prioritise fuel and restore energy to those sites.

Families of young children remain in the dark on whether they can send them to school after 80 schools and early learning centres were impacted by outages, with the decision coming.

Almost 500 phone towers and 450 NBN sites were down, leaving a quarter of a million customers without internet access.

Storm damage that collapsed transmission lines caused the Loy Yang A coal-fired power station in the Latrobe Valley to shut down along with several wind farms, which led to the outages.