Space weather being investigated for outages Tuesday 20 January

We've been asked about space weather, geomagnetic storms and solar flares impacting power in Victoria.

So, here are the details:

Information

About 8.30am on Tuesday, four major powerlines in western Victoria tripped, cutting power to about 7,937 customers in the western parts of the state.

Our controllers restored supply to all customers within 30 minutes.

The areas impacted were around the Charlton, Hamilton, Maryborough and Ararat regions.

We’re investigating the cause of the outages. However we received reports of solar flares occurring yesterday, and the Bureau of Meteorology had issued warnings about geomagnetic storms. As a precaution, we adjusted some network settings to help reduce further impacts.

 

And we made a video too...