Victoria’s Energy Minister, Lily D’Ambrosio is being pressed to urgently address the ongoing and increasingly frequent power outages affecting Yarrawonga and surrounding communities.

Moira Shire Council has written to Ms D’Ambrosio as the community continues to experience unacceptable levels of power disruption.

Chair administrator, Dr Graeme Emonson said the regular and prolonged outages were creating substantial hardships for many people and the council was standing ready to work with the government and energy distributors to find solutions.

“The situation has deteriorated significantly,” Dr Emonson said.

“We understand that there have been more power outages in the last 28 days than we experienced throughout the last three years combined.

“This alarming escalation demonstrates the urgent need for immediate intervention.”

Council has requested that Ms D’Ambrosio conduct an immediate investigation into the root causes of the recurring outages and to take action to prevent them happening again.

Dr Emonson said the council wants infrastructure upgrades made a priority to ensure reliable power supply for the growing community.

“Ongoing power reliability issues are compromising community safety and wellbeing, and undermining confidence in our region’s infrastructure capacity,” he said.

“The residents and businesses of Yarrawonga deserve reliable energy infrastructure that matches their contributions to Victoria's economic and social fabric.”

McCurdy to meet with Powercor

Ovens Valley MP, Tim McCurdy said the Australian Bureau of Statistics had confirmed electricity costs rose 15.5 per cent and gas 4.3 per cent in the year to November - far above the 3 per cent CPI – and the government had cut the Power Saving Bonus from $250 to $100.

He is meeting with Powercor in Parliament next week to discuss local reliability concerns and work through practical solutions for affected communities.

“Minister Lily D’Ambrosio can say Victoria has enough electricity, but families in Yarrawonga, Bundalong and Wilby live a very different reality,” Mr McCurdy said.

“In Bundalong, when the power goes out, residents can also be left without water; that is unacceptable.”

Speaking on Melbourne radio last week, Ms D’Ambrosio claimed there was enough electricity supply to meet the market, even with record demand.

She said the problem was with distribution and told 3AW that energy companies needed to have better resilience plans in place.

“We’re in fact going to legislate for that,” she said.

Powercor’s forward plan

Powercor has told customers that power outages in Yarrawonga were due to higher than unusual fault activity on the network, and the company was taking steps to reduce reliability in this area.

In a statement they said the outages came from a range of causes including vegetation coming into contact with powerlines during high winds, a fault on an underground cable supplying the area, and very high demand during the extreme heat contributing to equipment faults.

In some cases, including the outages on 11 and 25 January, no clear cause has been found yet.

“On total fire ban days, bushfire safety rules require us to operate our network and safety devices in more sensitive settings,” the statement said.

“When those devices operate, crews must patrol and inspect the impacted line before power can be restored.

“This can extend outage times but is critical for safety.”

Generators were installed in December and January to provide extra capacity to support the increase in demand over summer.

The replacement of several kilometres of main powerlines to increase capacity and improve reliability is expected to be completed before next summer.

Yarrawonga’s power comes from two main powerlines from Cobram East and customers connected to one of those lines were impacted by the recent outages.

While there is the potential to install another major powerline in the next five years, the company denied Yarrawonga needed to have its own zone substation.

“If the town and surrounding areas continue to grow, a new station may be needed in the future, but at this stage this is not expected for more than 10 years,” the statement said.

“We have not turned off power to the region; these outages were caused by local issues on the network, not wider supply problems.”

UPDATE: Minister for Energy and Resources Lily D’Ambrosio today introduced legislation to Parliament to require electricity distribution businesses develop and publish five-yearly resilience plans, with penalties for non-compliance.

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Thursday, 12th February 2026

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