South Australia is still isolated from the national energy grid, with repairs to a transmission tower at the interconnector delayed by more bad weather — and further damaging winds are expected today.
Key points:
- Repairs to the interconnector were due to be finished by Sunday
- Bad weather over the weekend delayed repairs, which should now be finished by tomorrow
- Another storm over the weekend saw 13,000 properties lose power
The tower near Tailem Bend was damaged during a severe storm last weekend that saw infrastructure badly damaged and more than 160,000 properties lose power.
The interconnector was expected to be restored by Sunday night but a vigorous cold front over the weekend delayed the repair works further.
Transmission company ElectraNet said the state should be reconnected to the grid by tomorrow.
About 13,000 properties lost power during this weekend’s storm and about 500 remained without power this morning.
SA Power Networks’ Paul Roberts told ABC Radio Adelaide the Riverland region had been hit hardest over the weekend, but he expected most properties to have power restored today.
“The main damage occurred on the Saturday afternoon, with the storm that came through then. Somehow, we seemed to have managed to be able to keep up with it yesterday. There were outages in the metropolitan area,” Mr Roberts said.
“But the big area hit was the Riverland on Saturday afternoon. I think there were about 6,500 without power at one stage … that’s down to 380 as of this morning.”
He said some customers in the Adelaide Hills who were without power from the storm the previous weekend, had their power restored over the weekend.
However, a severe weather warning for damaging winds averaging 50 to 70 kilometres per hour is in place for people in metropolitan Adelaide, Mount Lofty Ranges, Yorke Peninsula, Mid North, Kangaroo Island, Murraylands, Upper South East, Lower South East and parts of Flinders and Riverland districts.
The bureau has warned of wind gusts of up to 100kph, but senior forecaster Mark Anolak said conditions should ease today.
“It has certainly been a very wet spring and very windy as well,” he said.
“This weekend has been particularly windy, not just for Adelaide but for pretty much the whole south-east corner of the country.
“The good news is that these winds and showers are expected to gradually ease today and over the next 24 to 48 hours.”
Punters at the inaugural Harvest Rock Festival, which was held in the city over the weekend, were drenched, with more than 20 millimetres of rain falling in the CBD from Saturday morning through to 9am today.
Mr Anolak said while South Australians would get a taste of summer this week, with temperatures expected to hit 26 degrees Celsius on Thursday and 31C on Friday, more thunderstorms were expected next weekend.
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