The review, undertaken by Australian Energy Market Commissioner Michelle Shepherd, found the Christmas outages (starting Christmas Eve until December 28) impacted 107,000 Western Power customers in the Perth, Peel, South-West and Mid-West regions.
Western Australians endured record-breaking high temperatures over the four days, resulting in abnormally high-use of air conditioners and fans, which put pressure on the network.
The report noted these types of events, while historically rare, may occur more frequently due to the impacts of climate change.
The recommendations of the report include improving Western Power’s planning and forecasting, approach to fire risk management and operational response to extreme weather events.
It also recommended improvements to customer and community communications, and greater transparency of reliability issues.
The review found that the State Government approved all funding requests made by Western Power towards capital improvements to the distribution network over the past five years.
It states there was ‘no evidence that investments were delayed or did not occur due to regulatory or governmental decisions’.
