Derrinallum businesses are counting the cost after an almost 24-hour power outage, which they say is the latest in a series of cuts to hit the town.
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Traders like Ray Walters, owner of Derrinallum Foodworks, said damage bills were mounting after a spate of outages that have ruined stock and kept customers away.
Mr Walters estimates he has lost almost $10,000 in stock alone due to outages.
“This issue has been ongoing and we’re really angry about it,” he said.
“It doesn’t help our reliability. We’ve come to the reality that this is a long-term thing and we’ve put things (such as generators and solar power) in place.” He said the supermarket had four back-up generators, but were forced to throw out all frozen stock during an outage earlier this month, which then wasn’t restocked until the following Friday.
On Tuesday, power was lost in Derrinallum, Lismore, Berrybank, Foxhow and Vite Vite areas about 6.30pm, with some properties not coming back online until Wednesday afternoon.
A Powercor spokeswoman said it was investigating the cause of the underground cable fault, which left about 1107 customers without power.
She said diesel generators were brought in to gradually restore power while the issue was being worked on.
“Our crews were then able to safely construct another cable to restore power and reconnect customers to the network,” she said. The spokeswoman said all customers were reconnected to the grid by 3.30pm Wednesday.
Derri Takeaway owner Kym Gordon said continual outages were a constant stress.
“Being a small business it’s a big kick. I don’t even want to think about the figure. And it’s the emotional aspect too,” she said.
“The worst thing is I don’t want to buy a heap of stock in case it happens again.”
Jane Morrison, from the Blue Yabby in Lismore, said a lack of clarity was one of her biggest concerns.
“I asked my husband if he’d woken up during the night because the phone was buzzing with notifications – and he hadn’t received any (from Powercor). So I’d say not everyone receives their notifications,” she said.
The Powercor spokeswoman said when outages occurred, crews worked hard to restore power as quickly and safely as possible.
“Our records show that in Derrinallum during the past 12 months, there was a two-minute long outage in April, a 39-minute outage in November and one in June last year that lasted one hour and 22 minutes,” she said.
“We did conduct a planned outage in May that was part of a larger project to install a new safety protection device on powerlines to reduce fire risk. There have also been some momentary outages of less than one minute during that time.”