Western Power considers Parliamentary Inquiry report
Release Date: 20 January 2012
Following the release today of a Parliamentary report into Western Power and Horizon Power Electricity Transmission and Distribution Management, Western Power Managing Director Doug Aberle said the report highlights the size and extent of electricity network issues.
Mr Aberle said Western Power had significantly increased investment since becoming a stand alone networks business in 2006 in an effort to overcome many of the issues that the Committee expressed concern over.
"The safety of West Australians is of paramount concern to everyone who works at Western Power and will continue to be so.
"We will read this report line by line and consider its recommendations with a view to adopting all that we can."
Pole replacement
"In the six years since we have been a standalone business we spent $450 million on wood poles alone and we plan to spend another $800 million in the next five years to replace or reinforce at least 164,000 more poles.
"We inherited an inspection backlog in 2006 that was alarming. There were 99,000 poles overdue for inspection - now there is no backlog.
"In 2006 only 6,000 poles were replaced or reinforced, this year we will treat 40,000”
This level of uplift is not achieved without a significant paradigm shift.
“While we might ideally replace a significant number of the over 600,000 wooden power poles, it is necessarily a long term process. In all of our investment decisions we are conscious of the tension of making the network as safe as we can while recognising the impact on the cost of living.
"What we have done is targeted our investments to the most critical areas, with high an extreme fire risk areas the top priority.
"The establishment of the regulated market in 2006 enabled Western Power to make these significant changes.
"We certainly acknowledge the asset management systems we inherited in 2006 were in a very poor state and it has taken longer than we would have liked to make improvements. We have been upgrading all aspects of our asset management systems including a $40 million investment in sophisticated technology to enable real-time asset data collection and data base management," he said.
Management
In response to criticism of senior management, Mr Aberle said there had been major change. Of Western Power’s senior management team more than 30 per cent are new to the business.
"We have to maintain the right balance of industry expertise and fresh perspectives.
"In relation to the committee's concerns over transparency of information, Mr Aberle said Western Power was required to submit all of the details of its work practices, service standards, intended investments in expanding, maintaining and upgrading the network to the Economic Regulation Authority and its auditors.
"Our submission to the ERA in September on our five year investment plan was a document of over 2,500 pages. Our submission is public and interested organisations and members of the public respond to it," Mr Aberle said.
Contact us
If you have any questions regarding this media release please email us: media@westernpower.com.au
