Treasure hunt to solve electrical issues

Since this morning, electricity in parts of central Newcastle has been fluctuating, with power surging through businesses and homes, before abruptly stopping.

The constant on/off delivery system has irritated business people and residents, and municipal officials were contacted to address the matter.

At first, officials believed the matter was due to cable theft; however, this has been ruled out, as no identifiable breaks in the delivery system have been noted.

According to senior municipal officials, the monitoring systems at the substations showed no fault, yet the breakers were still tripping.

“Because the monitoring system is not picking up the fault, we have to manually isolate the problem,” explained an official.

He said looking for the problem at this time would be a matter of trial and error, as the power was restored when the breakers were reset, but only remained stable for a short time before tripping once more.

This, coupled with the fact the monitoring system was not picking up the faults, was making the search for the problem much harder.

“It may still be some time before we find the fault. We will try and stabilise the power for as long possible, but until we find the problem and can address it directly, the electricity will still fluctuate. We apologise to all those affected, and ask for patience as we address this matter.”

Work is expected to continue throughout the day to find and fix the problem.