Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

A few weeks ago, a storm hit the 240-kilometre-long Transgrid powerline that connects Broken Hill to Wentworth, to the south. Of the backup generators that were in place, one was being serviced and the other one shortly after failed, which caused a huge amount of hardship not only to the people of Broken Hill but also the other communities in the far west. That also affected the telecommunications towers. There's been a massive job to get everything back in order, from Telstra putting generators into those towers to Essential Energy and Transgrid getting generators up and going. It has caused hardship. There's a of wastage. Most people in town, including the coffee shops, lost all the contents of their fridges and freezers. Indeed, someone stole the generator from the pharmacy, so the chilled pharmaceuticals were all ruined. It was a major disaster.

I'd like to acknowledge Senator McAllister, who has shown great interest and has been in communication with me about the federal response to this. Just as a comment, though, Broken Hill is surrounded by renewables, including solar and wind, and there's a high level of rooftop solar. But, on this particular occasion, that seemed to work against getting the power back on track, with the surging solar impacting the generators.

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