Wyndham power upgrade

Western Power plans more improvements to Wyndham's power supply.

Regional branch manager Mike Laughton-Smith said that the results of measures taken so far had not met expectations.

"There had been some improvement, but this work, which included fitting lightning protection, bird deterrents, planned maintenance and operational improvements to the Kununurra-Wyndham power line did not produce the expected results.

In the last two months there have been 10 interruptions of the power supply in Wyndham plus a number of 'auto-reclosures' of less than one minute.

Five of these faults were directly attributable to lightning.

"A review of all fault causes in Wyndham has been completed and a program of works designed for the current year to improve further the reliability of local power supplies is being prepared.

"For example another automatic recloser will be installed at a cost of $35,000 to allow faster restoration of supply and assist us in locating faults more quickly.

"A new feeder line will be established to the Lakeside area at a cost of $80,000 and further bird proofing of powerlines will be conducted at a cost of $70,000.

"I have also committed to installing more stand-by generation (another generator)in Wyndham so that all the town's needs can be met when the power line trips off during peak times of the year.

"I am committed to improving power supplies in Wyndham," he said

Mr Laughton-Smith was in Wyndham and Kununurra last week to meet local stakeholders and discuss Western Power's response to the reliability issues in the region.

The new Shire chief executive officer Chris Adams chaired the Wyndham meeting.

Mr Laughton Smith said afterwards that it had gone well and that he had promised to cut the changeover time from a fault occurring to the Wyndham generators starting down to between 30 and 60 minutes.

Concerns over refrigeration being restarted without enough down time led him to suggest that the 'reclosure' time might be lengthened to one minute or even two if that was necessary.