Power outage map today

Power outages in Australia

Australia's power system is split into three separate grids, run by different operators, and delivered to customers by around fifteen distribution networks. That structure determines who fixes a power outage, how fast service comes back and where the most frequent blackouts happen. This page explains how the grid is organised, what causes most outages, and the investments shaping reliability across the country.

• How Australia's three separate grids are structured
• Who runs the networks that respond when the power goes out
• The main causes of blackouts across the country
• The investments and technologies reshaping outage response

Three separate grids, not one national network

Australia does not have a single national power grid. Three physically disconnected systems run in parallel:

• National Electricity Market (NEM) : the east-coast and south-east grid, covering Queensland, New South Wales, the ACT, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia. It supplies around 80% of national electricity demand.
• Wholesale Electricity Market (WEM) : Western Australia's south-west grid, known as the South West Interconnected System (SWIS). It supplies Perth and the surrounding regions.
• Isolated systems : the North West Interconnected System (NWIS) in the Pilbara, the Northern Territory grid, the Mount Isa system in north-west Queensland, and dozens of remote microgrids serving Indigenous and mining communities.

A blackout on one grid cannot cascade to the others, but each system has its own reliability profile, its own market rules and its own operators.

AEMO, AER and the rule-makers behind the lights

Several bodies share responsibility for reliability across the country, each with a specific role when something goes wrong.

AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator)

AEMO operates the NEM and the WEM in real time, balancing generation and demand minute by minute. When a major outage happens at transmission level, AEMO is the operator that coordinates the response and issues the public market notices that explain what happened.

AER (Australian Energy Regulator)

The AER sets the revenue and investment caps for transmission and distribution network businesses on the NEM. Its decisions determine how much each network can spend on outage prevention, vegetation management and storm response over five-year regulatory periods.

AEMC (Australian Energy Market Commission)

The AEMC writes the rules that govern the NEM and the retail electricity market. Most of the changes to reliability standards or to the way outages are compensated start as AEMC rule changes.

State and territory regulators

Each state and territory keeps its own safety regulator (for example Energy Safe Victoria) and, in some cases, a separate retail price regulator. Western Australia and the Northern Territory operate outside the NEM rules and run their own regulatory frameworks.

Generators, networks, retailers, the three roles to remember

On the NEM, the electricity industry has been deregulated since 1998 and is split into three distinct roles. Understanding which is which makes it easier to know who to contact during a power outage.

Generators

Generators produce electricity. The largest are AGL, Origin Energy, EnergyAustralia, Stanwell, CS Energy and Snowy Hydro. They feed power into the grid through transmission lines. Outages rarely start at this level, but generation shortages during heat waves can trigger load-shedding events affecting hundreds of thousands of customers.

Network businesses (distributors)

These companies own and operate the poles, wires and substations that deliver power to homes and businesses. They are regional monopolies, regulated by the AER on the NEM. When a tree falls on a line or a substation fails, the network business sends crews to repair it. Energex, Ergon, Ausgrid, Western Power, AusNet, SA Power Networks and the others are all network businesses, and their outage maps are the primary source of truth when the lights go out.

Retailers

Retailers buy electricity from generators and sell it to end customers. The four largest retailers, AGL, Origin Energy, EnergyAustralia and Alinta Energy, together hold around 70% of the residential market on the NEM. Smaller brands like Red Energy, Powershop, Momentum and Energy Locals compete for the rest. Retailers do not own the network and do not repair outages, but they operate the customer service lines that often field the first outage calls, and they manage life-support registers on behalf of their customers.

Fifteen distribution networks deliver power to most of the country

When a customer loses power, the company that actually sends out trucks is the local network business. Each network covers a specific region, with a monopoly granted by state legislation.

Queensland

• Energex : the south-east corner of Queensland, including Brisbane, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast and Ipswich. Around 1.5 million customers.
• Ergon Energy : the rest of the state, from Cairns and Townsville to the western mining regions. About 750,000 customers spread over 1.7 million square kilometres.

New South Wales and the ACT

• Ausgrid : Sydney, the Central Coast and the Hunter region. Around 1.8 million customers.
• Endeavour Energy : western and south-western Sydney, the Blue Mountains and the Illawarra. Around 1.1 million customers.
• Essential Energy : regional and rural NSW, with about 900,000 customers across 95% of the state's land area.
• Evoenergy : the Australian Capital Territory.

Victoria

Five separate distributors share the state, an arrangement unique to Victoria:

• CitiPower : inner Melbourne and the CBD.
• Powercor : western Victoria, including Geelong and Ballarat.
• United Energy : south-east Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula.
• Jemena : north-west Melbourne suburbs.
• AusNet Services : eastern Victoria and the Latrobe Valley, plus the state-wide electricity transmission network.

South Australia

• SA Power Networks : the only distributor in the state, serving around 900,000 customers across the entire SA grid.

Tasmania

• TasNetworks : the only distributor, serving roughly 290,000 customers across the island.

Western Australia

• Western Power : the South West Interconnected System (SWIS), including Perth and the south-west of the state. Around 1.1 million customers. Customers on the SWIS buy their electricity from Synergy, the state-owned retailer that holds the monopoly on the residential market in WA.
• Horizon Power : the rest of WA, including the Pilbara, the Kimberley and most regional towns, with a mix of grid-connected and microgrid customers.

Northern Territory

• Power and Water Corporation : the territory-owned utility serving Darwin, Alice Springs and most NT communities.

Why power outages happen on Australian networks

The mix of causes varies by state, but a handful of factors drive most blackouts across the country.

• Storms and high winds : the largest single cause of outages on most networks. Tropical cyclones in northern Queensland and the NT, east-coast lows in NSW, summer storms in south-east Queensland, and the strong westerly fronts that hit South Australia and Victoria in winter all bring down lines and damage substations.
• Bushfires : in fire-prone regions, networks de-energise lines during catastrophic-rated weather to prevent ignitions. The practice has expanded sharply since the 2019 to 2020 Black Summer fires.
• Heatwaves : extreme heat reduces the capacity of transformers and overhead lines. Multi-day heatwaves in Victoria and South Australia can trigger AEMO-directed load-shedding when supply runs short.
• Vegetation : trees and branches falling on lines remain a leading cause of unplanned outages, particularly on the long rural networks of Essential Energy, Ergon and Powercor.
• Equipment failure : ageing transformers, poles and cables fail more often as the fleet gets older, especially on the older urban networks of Ausgrid, CitiPower and SA Power Networks.
• Wildlife and accidents : possums, flying foxes and cockatoos contacting equipment are a daily reality across the country, alongside cars hitting poles and excavators damaging underground cables.

How reliability is measured: SAIDI, SAIFI, MAIFI

Australian network businesses report standardised reliability indicators to the AER each year, using the same metrics as most international jurisdictions.

Networks publish two sets of figures, with and without major event days, because cyclones, bushfires and severe storms account for a large share of total outage minutes.

Across the NEM, urban networks like Energex, Ausgrid and CitiPower typically post SAIDI values around 50 to 100 minutes per year when major events are excluded. Long rural networks like Essential Energy and Ergon often exceed 300 minutes per customer, simply because of distance and exposure.

Investments reshaping outage response

Australian networks are in the middle of one of the largest investment cycles in their history, driven by three pressures at once: ageing infrastructure, the rapid shift to renewables, and climate-driven weather extremes.

Network capital plans

Distribution networks across the NEM spend around $5 to $6 billion per year on capital works under the five-yearly regulatory determinations set by the AER. A growing share is dedicated to reliability and resilience, including replacement of ageing assets, undergrounding in bushfire-prone areas, and stronger pole construction in cyclone-exposed regions.

Rewiring the Nation

The federal Rewiring the Nation programme, announced in 2022, allocates $20 billion in low-cost finance to new transmission projects. Most of the money is going to the priority lines identified by AEMO in its Integrated System Plan, including Project EnergyConnect (NSW to SA), HumeLink (Snowy 2.0 to Sydney) and Marinus Link (Tasmania to Victoria). These projects are designed to integrate new renewable generation and reduce the risk of supply-driven outages on the NEM.

Capacity Investment Scheme

The Capacity Investment Scheme, also federally funded, underwrites new renewable generation and storage to keep pace with coal plant retirements. The South Australian battery fleet, the Victorian Big Battery and the Waratah Super Battery in NSW are the largest examples, and each provides fast-frequency response that can reduce the depth and duration of supply-side blackouts.

Smart grid, virtual power plants and customer alerts

Beyond physical assets, networks and retailers are deploying technology aimed at detecting outages faster, restoring service automatically, and giving customers better visibility into what is happening on their street.

Smart meters

Victoria became the first Australian state with a mandatory smart-meter rollout, completed by 2014. The federal government has since approved a nationwide rollout to be completed by 2030, which will let every network detect outages at the address level and confirm restoration automatically.

Self-healing networks

Most NEM distribution networks are deploying automated reclosers, sectionalisers and Fault Location, Isolation and Service Restoration (FLISR) systems. When a fault occurs, these devices isolate the damaged segment and reroute power around it, often within seconds. A typical neighbourhood blackout that would once have lasted an hour can now be limited to a few houses for a few minutes.

Battery storage

Australia leads the world in installed rooftop solar per capita, and the rapid uptake of home batteries is now reshaping the grid. The federal Cheaper Home Batteries Programme, launched in 2025, subsidises residential battery installation. Combined with grid-scale storage, this is reducing the risk of supply-side outages during evening peaks.

Virtual power plants

Retailers and networks are aggregating home batteries and rooftop solar into virtual power plants (VPPs) that AEMO can dispatch to support the grid. The South Australian VPP run by Tesla, the AGL VPP and Origin's VPP are the largest deployments. They reduce the risk that AEMO will need to call for involuntary load shedding during stressed conditions.

Outage maps, alerts and concessions to know

Network outage maps

Every NEM distributor, plus Western Power, Horizon Power and Power and Water Corporation, publishes a public outage map updated in near real time. These maps show planned and unplanned outages, with estimated restoration times and the number of customers affected. They remain the first thing to check when the power goes out.

Proactive alerts

Most networks now offer SMS, email and app alerts when an outage is reported at an address. Customers register through the network's website. Alerts include estimated restoration times and updates as crews progress.

Life support customers

Households relying on life-support equipment (oxygen concentrators, home dialysis, ventilators) can register with their retailer to receive priority notifications of planned outages and prioritised restoration during unplanned events.

Energy concessions

Each state runs its own concession scheme for pensioners, low-income households and life-support customers. The Queensland Electricity Rebate, the Victorian Power Saving Bonus, the NSW Low Income Household Rebate and the SA Energy Concession are the largest examples.

When a power outage takes the internet down with it

A power outage and an internet outage are not the same thing in Australia, but they often happen together. Understanding which is which helps customers decide who to contact.

Why an internet outage can be caused by a power outage

The vast majority of Australian homes are connected to the NBN (National Broadband Network), the wholesale fixed-line network built between 2009 and 2020. Each connection point depends on local power: the home router, the NBN street cabinet for FTTN and FTTC technologies, and the NBN node for HFC connections all need electricity to operate. When the power goes out on a street, the internet usually goes down with it, even if the NBN itself is not affected.

When the internet is down but the power is on

When the power is working but the internet is not, the issue typically sits with the NBN itself or with the retail ISP. The four largest ISPs in Australia are Telstra, Optus, TPG and Vodafone, with smaller players like iiNet and Aussie Broadband competing for the rest. Each ISP publishes its own outage map. If the power is on at the address, checking the ISP's status page is the next step.

Mobile networks during a power outage

The three mobile networks (Telstra, Optus, TPG/Vodafone) run on their own infrastructure of towers, most of which have battery backup lasting a few hours and some with diesel generators for longer outages. During multi-day blackouts after cyclones or major storms, mobile coverage often degrades as backup power runs out. Sending an SMS to the network's outage line, or using a phone on a different carrier, is often the most reliable way to confirm an outage in remote areas.

Useful references