United Energy has recently completed a major safety upgrade of the network in the Red Hill area on the Mornington Peninsula—one of the highest bushfire risk areas of the network.
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Crews replaced more than 1500m of bare wire overhead powerlines in Red Hill South with technology to further improve safety.
The program involved replacing 11 poles and 1,200m of powerline with covered conductor —a form of insulated powerline that dramatically reduces the risk of a spark if powerlines hit the ground.
Another 300m of bare wire powerline was replaced with aerial bundled cable—a product that combines multiple low voltage conductors into an insulated bundle, again improving safety.
This work is part of a broad suite of works to continuously inspect and upgrade the network, which includes maintaining more than 13,000km of powerlines, 215,000 power poles and other infrastructure.
“We are always looking at ways to build on how we keep our network safe and reliable, and we’ve already had success with covered conductor technology in other parts of the network in recent years,” United Energy head of customer experience Adam Nason said.
“This is all about getting the network ready for the hottest time of year and keep power safe and reliable for our customers.”
Other activities United Energy has conducted to prepare for summer include:
- Using LiDAR technology mounted on helicopters to inspect vegetation across our network. With an expanded helicopter fleet we completed our full year inspection program months ahead of schedule.
- Cut trees away from more than 33,000 powerline spans (the line between two power poles) across Melbourne’s east, south east and the Mornington Peninsula, including around 9,000 spans in the highest risk areas.
- Upgraded more than 30 low-voltage circuits and distribution substations to support growing demand.
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If power is affected, customers will be updated via SMS, through United Energy’s outage map or through its Victorian customer contact centre. Customers are encouraged to sign up to outage alerts.
