Following electricity outages, particularly severe in the north-west, caused by extreme weather in August last year, Parliament decided to commission a report.

That report was released today and made recommendations focused on improving TasNetworks’ emergency response procedures, staff training in disaster response and improving its communication with customers in response to major incidents.

Responses to the report are reproduced below.

Media release – Nick Duigan, Minister for Energy and Renewables, 14 May 2025

Independent Review into the 2024 Tasmanian Network Outage Released

The Tasmanian Government has today released the Final Report of the Independent Review into the widespread electricity outages caused by the severe weather event in August 2024.

Minister for Energy and Renewables, Nick Duigan, said the review was undertaken following widespread outages and the response following the extreme weather event.

“The extreme weather brought heavy rainfall, flooding, and damaging wind gusts, resulting in significant storm damage to the electricity distribution network,” Minister Duigan said.
“To a lesser extent, the transmission network, particularly in the North and North-West regions of the State, was also impacted.

“In response to the widespread outages, the Tasmanian Parliament passed a motion requesting an independent review into TasNetworks’ response.

The Review focused on five key themes:
•    TasNetworks’ network resilience and regulation
•    TasNetworks’ capability, systems and processes
•    TasNetworks’ communication
•    Personal resilience and vulnerable communities
•    Tasmania’s emergency management arrangements

This Review provides valuable insights and recommendations to strengthen Tasmania’s energy resilience and emergency response capabilities. The Government will consider the Report and recommendations from the reviewer, Mr Rhys Edwards

Minister Duigan thanked Mr Edwards for his comprehensive work and all those who contributed to the review process.

“The Government also recognises the work of Member for Braddon, Craig Garland MP, who passed a motion in parliament in September 2024 seeking to establish the independent review,” Minister Duigan said.

The Report is publicly available here.

Media release – Craig Garland, independent MHA for Braddon, 14 May 20225

Response to Independent Review of 2024 Tasmanian Network Outage

I welcome today’s release by Minister Duigan of the Independent Review into the 2024 Tasmanian Network Outage.

This review came about from a motion I moved in Parliament last year. Although the Government didn’t support the motion at the time, I’m pleased Minister Duigan acted on the call from the Parliament and initiated this important review. I thank Labor and the crossbench for supporting the motion. It’s a good example of what can be achieved in a minority government.

The scale of the network outage was unprecedented: 216,755 customers lost power. My electorate of Braddon was the worst affected, with some customers waiting up to three weeks for power to be restored. Although TasNetworks announced their own internal review, in the aftermath of the outage, there was considerable public frustration and mistrust towards TasNetwork, which is why I felt an independent review was justified.

The independent reviewer, Mr Rhys Edwards has brought considerable experience to this task. In making certain findings he has relied on the internal reviews conducted by TasNetworks, which until today, have not been publicly available, so I was pleased he recommended their publication.

Although Mr Edwards found TasNetworks’ staffing levels, infrastructure and the resilience of the distribution network adequate, in my view, there is still a live question about whether TasNetworks is investing enough to make its electricity infrastructure more disaster resilient.

TasNetworks reportedly incurred $9.41 million in storm response costs, including $7 million in capital expenditure for asset replacement and $2.4 million in operating expenses, primarily due to increased labour for emergency response. This is on top of the $9.5 million in compensation it paid to customers affected by the outage. TasNetworks has applied to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) to recover $4.6 million of this expense over three years from Tasmanian electricity customers—an amount that will be added to business and household electricity bills if approved. The AER’s decision on this application is expected later this year.

I believe this substantial expense reinforces the importance of investing in disaster resilient electricity infrastructure. As the saying goes, “a penny spent might be a pound saved.” According to Mr Edwards this will require changes to the national energy rules to place greater emphasis on network resilience investment. The rule review process to address this shortcoming is underway, but any changes to those rules will not take effect in Tasmania until the next five-year regulatory period begins in 2029.

The report rightly takes a forward-looking approach, making recommendations focused on improving TasNetworks’ emergency response procedures, staff training in disaster response, and improving its communication with customers in response to major incidents. The recommendations also seek to strengthen personal and community resilience in response to future major outages. I was also pleased to see recommendations imposing a measure of transparency on TasNetworks, by requiring them to report to the Minister at 6 monthly intervals on progress they are making implementing these changes, and to report each year on their organisational capability to respond to major incidents. This should ensure the recommendations don’t just gather dust.

I look forward to the Government’s formal response to the review and intend to work with the Government to see that many or all the recommendations are implemented.

Media release – TasNetworks, 14 May 2025

Building back better from unprecedented storms

TasNetworks welcomes the release of the 2024 Tasmanian Network Outage Review (NOR). Many of its recommendations are already being implemented.

To complement the independent review, TasNetworks has today also released its Post-Incident Review (PIR) into the unprecedented storms of late-August/early-September 2024. TasNetworks’ PIR was completed first, and helped inform the independent NOR conducted by Mr Rhys Edwards for the Tasmanian Government.

Both reviews align strongly with recommendations that TasNetworks improve outage communications, strengthen its processes, and help improve customer resilience.

TasNetworks CEO, Seán Mc Goldrick, said Tasmanians need electricity that’s safe, reliable and affordable.

“We thank Mr Edwards for his very comprehensive and balanced report. Upon its release, we’re pleased to have also released our internal PIR on the August/September storms,” Dr Mc Goldrick said.

“Our people restored power to almost 200,000 Tasmanians. It was a prompt and impressive response for a natural disaster of that scale – unprecedented in living Tasmanian memory.

“We appreciate Mr Edwards concluding that our people performed ‘extremely well’, showed ‘a high level of commitment’, and that the unprecedented storms would’ve challenged the response of any Australian utility business.

“We acknowledge some customers’ challenges and frustration around timely and accurate communication. We’ve already embarked on ways to improve accuracy and timeliness.

“TasNetworks routinely reviews major events, as we’ve done via our PIR. We never stop looking for improvements and listening to customers.

“Learnings and improvements from the 2024 storms have already boosted our response to late-summer bushfires on the west coast, and lightning storm outages in March,” Dr Mc Goldrick said.

TasNetworks’ PIR was conducted by independent consulting firms Verian and Dynamic Consulting, and further scrutinised by an engineering expert from The Customer Advocate.

In certifying TasNetworks’ PIR, the independent advisor concluded ‘the level of network damage and resultant power interruptions exceeded TasNetworks’ reasonable capability to promptly and effectively respond’, and that given the storms’ intensity, ‘no electricity undertaking in Australia would not have had challenges in safely restoring the network and supply to consumers in just a few days’.

The storms were retrospectively declared a ‘natural disaster’ by the Australian and Tasmanian governments.

At the peak of the August/September storm response, there were about 47,000 Tasmanian customers simultaneously without power, across almost 230 outages. Over the outage period, TasNetworks sent more than 150,000 SMS messages to customers, and its contact centre received more than 40,000 calls, often choking capacity. The business received more than 45,000 separate outage reports (with the same outage often being reported multiple times). Between 29 August and 3 September, TasNetworks’ website had almost 170,000 visits.

TasNetworks’ PIR recommends opportunities to improve customer communication (in crisis situations), emergency escalation procedures, facilitating timely and accurate outage information from the field, crew fatigue management and supporting vulnerable customers. Many of those improvements are already underway.

Dr Mc Goldrick recognised Tasmanians who suffered many days and nights without power, causing hardship and understandable frustration.

“We acknowledge affected Tasmanians for their resilience as our people did everything possible to restore power as quickly as possible,” Dr Mc Goldrick.

“TasNetworks thanks Tasmanians for their overwhelming support and understanding in difficult and frustrating times. The kindness and appreciation that most Tasmanians show our people is noticed and valued and at every level of our business.

“I also thank the efforts of front-line field personnel, the business’ safety culture, visibility of our leaders, our permanent staffing and resourcing and our third-party contractors who supplemented our storm response,” he said.

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