Mount Isa and North West Queensland is counting the cost after an outage at APA's Diamantina Power Station took five and half hours to resolve.
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Diamantina is the only power station connecting the region since the start of this year and APA blamed "an operational issue" that halted power transmission at 9.10am causing chaos around town with businesses and schools forced to close, fuel unavailable and traffic lights not working.
APA said they were progressively restoring power supply from Diamantina Power Station complex following an operational issue which triggered an outage.
"APA is working with Ergon and customers to restore power as quickly and as safely as possible and we anticipate power will continue to be progressively restored to Mount Isa and the surrounding region throughout the afternoon and evening," an APA spokesperson said.
Ergon Energy said it was supporting APA, as their crews work to restore power to Mount Isa and Cloncurry as soon as practically possible.
"We will work together on the safe restoration of power to all our customers in these communities," Ergon said.
APA said they were progressively restoring power around 2.35pm but there are calls to end APA's power monopoly in the region.
With almost 10,000 customers affected by the outage and industry ground to a halt in Mount Isa, Cloncurry, Dajarra, Julia Creek and Kajabbi, CopperString Managing Director Joseph O'Brien said the North West Minerals Province was too important to not have access to the national grid.
"This is why we need to build CopperString 2.0, we can't have a world leading minerals powerhouse that's without power," Mr O'Brien said.
"These types of outages and high energy prices are why we are working with the Australian and Queensland Governments to progress our project because it will provide a secure power supply for northern Queensland and help unlock new mining and clean energy investment and jobs in our great state."
The calls were backed by Bob and Robbie Katter.
Bob Katter said the failure proved the North West needed a cheap, reliable, competitive source of power.
"If you have to depend on the Mount Isa Power Station, you've only one source of power and you cannot operate a multi-million-dollar mining operation on the basis of a single power station. Now with CopperString and the power station, you have got a guarantee that this will never occur again because the chances of the transmission line and power station being out at the same time is virtually nil. So we will have secure power," Bob Katter said.
"But this outage presents a fantastic argument for CopperString which will provide Mount Isa with all its peak load power and there is going to be a terrible, terrible fallout if the $1200 million isn't being loaned and invested by the federal government."
KAP Leader and Traeger MP Robbie Katter said the outage was one side effect of Mount Isa's power supply monopoly, which came about following the closure of the aged 218MW gas-fired Mica Creek Power Station in January.
He said the building of CopperString 2.0's common-use energy infrastructure was now more important than ever.
"If we were connected to the national power grid - like most other parts of the state - this outage would never have happened," Mr Katter said.
"CopperString 2.0 will deliver the reliability to us that all other communities in Queensland enjoy, and will prevent us from having to continue paying some of the highest energy prices in the world."
Mr Katter said untold economic and employment opportunities were being lost each year due to the North West Minerals Province not being connected to the National Electricity Market.
Following the restoration of supply, APA will commence an investigation into the root cause of the operational issue that led to today's outage.
"We apologise to our customers and the businesses and communities affected by today's outage for the inconvenience caused," an APA spokesperson said.
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Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
