MILLION dollar-plus power bill savings have been made by Telstra following a devastating fire which wiped out its Warrnambool exchange building and most south-west Victorian communications more than two years ago.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Fire recovery prompted the national telco to drastically review its practices and remove obsolete and redundant equipment in the Koroit Street exchange.
Similar modifications were later rolled out through other exchanges across Australia.
Inquiries by The Standard have revealed annual electricity reduction equivalent to the consumption of at least 360 households a year nationally, including savings at the Warrnambool site equivalent to more than 50 homes.
At current domestic power charges, the savings nationally are up $1 million annually.
“Implementation of recommendations arising from Warrnambool at other sites has resulted in energy savings of almost 2.4 gigawatt hours a year,” Telstra general manager for energy and greenhouse management, Brian Hennessy told The Standard.
“This includes de-powered network equipment and the associated savings in airconditioning.
"An estimated 36,800 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions have been saved through project initiatives during the 2014 financial year.”
The Telstra investigator who compiled a comprehensive report into the Warrnambool fire, David Pitz, described the power consumption cut as one of the biggest surprises to come out of the re-build.
“In the months following the restoration we noticed a significant drop in the consumption of power at the site which was something we had not been expecting,” he reported in a June Telstra bulletin.
“It was removal of obsolete and redundant equipment from our network that made the biggest difference.”
Eighteen of the 22 recommendations from the fire investigation report have been implemented.
Mr Hennessy said the remaining items were expected to be finalised in three months.
The repairs and re-build cost Telstra about $18m, plus more than $7m in compensation to business operators affected by the outage which is estimated to have caused $18m in total losses across the region.
