Broken Hill and surrounding communities briefly lost power again, less than two months after a significant outage. (ABC Broken Hill: Bill Ormonde)
In short:
Nearly 13,000 homes and businesses in the far west of NSW briefly lost power this morning due to a fault with the region's transmission lines.
Power was fully restored within two hours, but many communities have reflected on a similar experience in October which caused significant financial and emotional hardship.
What's next?
Inquiries into the major power outage in October are ongoing.
Less than two months after a significant power outage hit most of the far west of New South Wales, the area had to go without power again Tuesday morning.
Around 12,700 customers in Broken Hill and surrounding communities were impacted by the blackout shortly before 9:30am.
Lasting around two hours, the outage was felt as far away as Tibooburra in the far north-west corner of the state, 330 kilometres away.
For many, the outage was a reminder of the rolling blackouts experienced across the region in October, after a possible tornado caused extensive damage to electricity infrastructure south of Broken Hill.
The October power outages left Broken Hill and surrounding communities reliant on backup power for weeks. (Supplied: Vlatko's photography)
A spokesperson for Essential Energy said a fault in the transmission lines that feed power to the region, owned and operated by Transgrid, was also responsible for Tuesday's outage.
"While Transgrid investigated the cause, Essential Energy began preparations to start up the generators at Pinnacles Place to provide power to the customers in the communities outside of Broken Hill," the spokesperson said in a statement.
"During that time, Transgrid restored power to their transmission line and Essential Energy began the process of restoring power to the region.
"For safety purposes, this process takes a bit of time, as the power is reconnected to areas in a strategic manner to avoid any overloading as electrical items come back on."
Previous outage left lasting impression
While the power was fully restored within two hours of today's initial outage, there was too much uncertainty for some businesses.
Cafe owner Abigail Hughes, who had to close her business for three days and throw out tens of thousands of dollars worth of stock back in October, said the power went out during her busiest trading period Tuesday morning.
"It is very frustrating; we had no idea how long the power was going to be out for [so] it seemed the right decision to close," she said.
"Fortunately, we did not have to throw any stock out."
Abigail Hughes was frustrated by the blackout, which occurred during her busiest period of the day. (Supplied: Abigail Hughes)
Broken Hill Mayor Tom Kennedy acknowledged the community's frustration but believed communication from the company had improved since the events in October.
"Transgrid rang me within 10 minutes of the power going out to outline what had happened and they were working to restore the power ASAP," Mr Kennedy said.
The incident coincides with three ongoing inquiries into the October blackout, directed by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, the Australian Energy Regulator and the New South Wales Parliament.
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