Assessment of Network Outage Event on 12 November 2022 - Power and Water Corporation

The Commission has published an assessment under clause 5.4.4 of the Electricity Industry Performance Code of a Power and Water Corporation report for the purpose of verifying that a network outage event in the Alice Springs region on 12 November 2022 was outside of Power and Water Corporation’s control, and therefore able to be excluded from its network performance reporting and guaranteed service level payments.

On 12 November 2022, a severe thunderstorm caused extensive damage to the electricity distribution infrastructure across the Alice Springs region, resulting in prolonged network outages for customers connected to the Alice Springs network. Power and Water Corporation notified the Commission and submitted a report in accordance with the requirements of the Electricity Industry Performance Code on 23 November 2022. The report proposed to exclude events commencing on 12 November 2022 in the Alice Springs region from adjusted category performance reporting and guaranteed service level payments.

The Commission has verified the network outage event that occurred in the Alice Springs region on 12 November 2022 was due to a natural event and is a statistical outlier, and was therefore outside the control of Power and Water Corporation. As such, the Commission considers the event an excluded event for the purpose of the Electricity Industry Performance Code.