POWERCOR is investigating a pole fire that cut power to Warrnambool homes near Younger Street this morning.
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It was a busy night for the power supplier, with a separate incident leaving 734 Port Fairy customers offline from 10.18pm to 1.28am.
Powercor spokesman Lyall Johnson said pollution from sea mist on insulators, a build up of salt, dirt and smog, had caused the Port Fairy outage and power dips in Warrnambool and Koroit this morning.
"There's sea mist moisture in the air after a hot period which ends up with the electrical current flashing over the insulator, which can damage the insulator quite badly," he told The Standard.
"In Warrnambool the whole city and probably Koroit experienced some dipping this morning but as far as we can tell the power didn't go out.
"We're planning a flashover where we routinely wash the insulators, especially after seeing a few incidents like this."
Mr Johnson said the power pole fire near the Warrnambool Golf Club cut power to 265 customers in the neighbourhood about 10pm.
All but 25 had their service restored by midnight, with power rerouted from a different direction.
A Powercor crew is now replacing the pole to restore service to the 25 customers still without power.