Residents and businesses in a semi-rural suburb south of Perth are still plagued by power outages despite several recent upgrades to the network.
People living in the once-sleepy estuary community of Dawesville have been impacted by power outages for years due to growing pressure on the system.
The region spanning from Lake Clifton to Mandurah has seen a surge in residential development, and tourism continues to grow in the area.
On the weekend almost 3,000 homes and businesses were without electricity which Western Power says was due to storm-related damage.
But residents say there has been several outages in recent months, despite the upgrades.
Power problems persist
Dylan McMile manages a tavern on the water in Dawesville and said whenever there was an outage the business had to close.
"We have to shut the kitchen immediately because of safety reasons," he said.
"It's not just happened once, it has been happening for quite a while. People are constantly complaining about power outages."
In December last year WA energy minister Bill Johnston announced Western Power would fast-track several upgrades to the system to meet the extra demand.
The announcement followed a review of the system, which was undertaken after a five-day outage in Christmas 2021 that left hundreds without power and cooling during a heat wave.
Western Power has since completed those upgrades which it said would speed up power restoration in the event of an outage.
A spokesperson for Western Power said the upgrades would mitigate issues caused by overuse and "create greater capacity for forecasted future customer demand on the network".
"No electricity network in the world can guarantee 100 per cent reliability and faults occur for a number of reasons," the spokesperson said.
Shorter outages
Anna Keddie manages a caravan park on the estuary and said they often copped backlash from visitors when there was an outage, especially during the hotter months.
During the five-day outage in Christmas 2021 she said they had to fill toilets with water from a bucket in order to flush them.
Since the upgrades to the network she said there had been a noticeable difference in the length of time that outages lasted.
"There's been times when the power has been out for a few days … but they might only last a couple of hours now, so the length in time has improved," Ms Keddie said.
Despite that she said Dawesville was continuing to grow and issues around power, mobile phone reception, and water needed to be looked at.
"We have a lot of problems even with phone connection. Nothing works out here [in the case of a power outage] despite the fact that we're only 15 minutes from Mandurah," she said.
"There's so many new estates going up they should be looking at these issues."
