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Emergency response Western Power always plans far ahead to prepare the network for summer heat, bushfire weather and storm season.
exercises, working closely with the Bureau of Meterology to obtain detailed weather briefings and building our forecasting for unique extreme weather conditions that impact our network (e.g. pole top fire weather). Communicating directly with residential and industrial customers around restoration times, what we are doing in the field and wider emergency communications including leveraging our Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) to contribute to the Emergency WA website has been a focus for this year. We have also worked to revise our targeted communication protocols and messaging to ensure it is fit-for-purpose for our key stakeholders to ensure they can keep customers and businesses informed before, during and after an incident.
Despite this extensive preparatory work, the frequency and severity of significant and often simultaneous emergency events caused by circumstances outside of Western Power’s control is growing, with restoration times often extended due to the sheer number of hazards being caused by extreme weather conditions. Through extensive preparedness activities, forecasting, innovative network augmentation and our dedicated workforce, we’re working hard to ensure the impacts of climate change and resulting extreme weather conditions are mitigated as much as possible. A significant focus for FY25 has been streamlining and building upon our emergency response capabilities, especially our whole-of-business coordination for emergency response. Complex weather conditions and climate change had a significant impact on the network during FY25, with storms, heatwaves and conditions that increased the risk of pole top fires impacting our operations early in the calendar year. Operational crews and our network operations teams had their work cut out for them, with a number of emergency response events occurring in short succession. In just one week in January 2025, Western Power dealt with an extreme heatwave, severe thunderstorms and extreme weather conditions which led to pole top fires affecting power supply. February saw significant storm activity across Perth metropolitan, Perth Hills and the Wheatbelt. In early March, customers experienced interruptions due to pole top fire activity, while later in the month customers in Perth’s north were impacted by a lightning strike to transmission infrastructure. While Western Power crews work as quickly and safely as possible to make hazards safe, repair and restore power, recovery for events like these can be extended. Our organisational capacity to respond to emergency events is growing, adopting cloud-based emergency management solution WebEOC to bring us in line with organisations like WA Police, increasing our inter-agency cooperation and cross-functional training
Western Power Annual Report 2025
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