In March and April 2024, we teamed up with CitiPower and Powercor to hold a series of community workshops. These workshops were held in Ballarat, Red Hill and online, and sought feedback on initiatives addressing network resilience and regional and rural energy supply.

Local councils, emergency services, advocates for vulnerable groups, community groups and other stakeholders came together to explore potential solutions to enhance the resilience of the local electricity network and tackle network capacity and reliability improvements.

What we sought feedback on

A range of solutions were proposed, including:

• Expansion of our Mobile Emergency Response Vehicles (MERV) fleet
• Targeted undergrounding and aerial bundling of cables
• An IT tool to support prioritisation during wide-scale outages
• Commissioning of additional community liaison officers to engage with community groups and local government to support improved resilience for extreme weather days.

What we heard

Participants were in favour of many of the initiatives proposed and provided insightful feedback and suggestions, including:

• Increasing the number of community liaison officers and reconsidering the areas they manage and skillsets required
• The need to proactively educate the community about MERVs and their role, for example that they’ll be equipped with a generator, floodlighting, internet access and phone charging facilities to provide central support and updates during emergencies and prolonged power outages
• Proactive, collaborative measures to bolster energy resilience were seen as essential, with aerial bundled cable seen as the most cost-effective solution, particularly in high-risk areas such as Red Hill.