By Tanya Steele
A number of Healesville Traders were unable to operate on Thursday 6 July due to planned outages by AusNet along Maroondah Highway.
Healesville business corresponded with AusNet on 21 June via email to find out why the planned works were going ahead on the school holidays.
An AusNet company spokesperson responded on 29 June with the following:
“This outage has been planned for the school holidays as it interrupts supply to 2- schools in Healesville. With work that impacts schools we try to take advantage of term breaks to lessen the community impact. The works are to replace two unserviceable poles on the incoming high voltage network to the township. As these two poles are a significant risk the works will need to proceed as planned.”
This is the second time the power company has cut power to the main street in a school holiday period, traders were also impacted in the April school holiday period on April 18 this year.
A spokesperson from AusNet also communicated to Star Mail on Friday 7 July that to maintain a safe and reliable network, AusNet needs to undertake planned outages from time to time so that we can carry out essential upgrades.
“These planned outages were scheduled during school holidays to avoid impacting schools. Planned outages in tourist destinations are difficult to plan for as we must balance the impacts to the schools and the local community shops,” they said.
AusNet said that as they understand there is never a good time to be without power and apologise for the inconvenience caused.
