Dear Mrs Irwin

Thank you for your letter of 25 May 2010 forwarding a petition regarding disruptions to power supply distributed by South Australia’s ETSA Utilities. I am responding to this petition in my role as Minister for Resources and Energy.

Various factors, both planned and unplanned, can impede network reliability. Network businesses, in this case ETSA Utilities, are responsible for undertaking a range of maintenance practices aimed at reducing the number of outages and the time it takes to reconnect supply. In addition, jurisdictional governments have responsibility for monitoring and reporting on the reliability of distribution networks against performance standards.

With regard to the interruptions to supply between 30 November 2009 and 4 February 2010, I am advised that ETSA Utilities identified the causes for the distribution network failures as a faulty insulator and shorting out of the system due to interference by large flocks of corellas. In response to these issues, ETSA Utilities has replaced the faulty insulator and installed bird scarers, wide brace cross arms to minimise the risk of the lines touching, and additional fuses to minimise the likelihood of future outages.