No GSL payments relating to Tropical Cyclone Marcus

On Saturday 17 March 2018 Tropical Cyclone Marcus impacted Darwin and has now been officially named as the most damaging storm since Cyclone Tracy devastated the city in 1974. Heavy rainfall, damaging winds in excess of 130km per hour and fallen trees caused major damage to Darwin’s power network infrastructure. TC Marcus was rated as a category two cyclone.

Just over 28 500 electricity customers lost power, or 33% of customers and more than 500 line spans went down. Around 11 000 customers were restored by Power and Water Corporation (PWC) within 24 hours, and 200 customers remained without power 11 days after the event. The majority of the power outages resulted from damage to the network caused by large falling trees. No generation assets were tripped offline during the cyclone, despite large fluctuations on the network.

The Northern Territory of Australia, Electricity Industry Performance Code (Standards of Service and Guaranteed Service Levels) (EIP) provides that where network providers (that is, PWC) do not meet minimum performance standards they are to make Guaranteed Service Level (GSL) payments to impacted customers. The EIP Code sets out certain exclusions from normal reporting and GSL payments, including natural events as classified by the US Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers’ (IEEE) 2.5 Beta method. The Beta method is a statistical method to quantify events that are outside normal operational boundaries, and thus should be considered separately from normal (underlying) performance reporting.

This report sets out that TC Marcus meets the 2.5 Beta method criteria and therefore PWC is excluded from making GSL payments to impacted customers. The Northern Territory Government made available a $250 and $400 Immediate Relief Payment for households that were without mains power for more than 72 hours.

Tropical Cyclone Marcus Natural Event Report: Electricity Industry Performance Code