Frustrated by power black-outs

Ben Glover | 16th July 2009

JUBILEE Pocket businesses are becoming fed up with the regular power outages they experience.

A black out yesterday afternoon effected 727 customers.

Those numbers include domestic customers, offices and shops and although about half of the effected customers were back on line soon after the 12.28pm black out, the other half were without power for the rest of the afternoon.

IGA Jubilee Central Owner Alan Malakou emigrated from South Africa and he said that he never experienced anything like the amount of power outages in his home country as he had since taking over his Jubilee Pocket store.

He estimated that the amount of power failures in the past year had cost him three days of trading and tens of thousands of dollars in sales.

Mr Malakou said it just wasn't good enough.

“It's like a third world country. I've lost three full days trading if you add up all the power outages over the past year,” Mr Malakou said.

“I can understand that things go wrong but this is beyond a joke.

“We do get compensated for some of our loss but if customers come to shop here and see that the place is closed, they go somewhere else and they don't come back.” Ergon Energy Corporate Communications Manager Bob Pleash said he understood the frustrations of the effected customers and said that the company was working hard to improve the Jubilee Pocket network.

“We understand that customers aren't happy and we apologise and empathise for the problems the blackout causes,” Mr Pleash said.

“We're constantly looking at ways to reduce the impact of these events and we've upgraded the network to separate Airlie Beach from Jubilee Pocket and Shute Harbour.

“We're also establishing a new sub-station in Jubilee Pocket, which is designed to improve power supply to the Jubilee Pocket area.”

Mr Pleash said the sub-station was worth about $23 million and would be ready at the end of the year.