"We understand the frustration and inconvenience the current power outages are causing," said Western Power this morning after storms have wiped out power supplies across large chunks of WA.
Western Power said crews had made good progress in restoring power, despite significant damage to it infrastructure and the surrounding area.
At the peak of the storm incident, about 34,000 customers were without power," Western Power said.
"We have since restored about 18,000 of these customers and will work methodically and safely to restore more customers as the evening progresses and over coming days.
"Overnight another severe storm front impacted a large portion of our network in the Central Wheatbelt, Goldfields, South Coastal and Great Southern and districts, with outages experienced due to damaging weather in Kalgoorlie, Merredin, Kellerberrin and surrounds and Walpole.
"There are an additional 13,000 customers without power in that area down from around 23,000 yesterday evening."
This morning Western Power said 31,500 customers were currently without power across the network.
About 7000 customers in the Perth Hills are without power and they are working to restore these customers today.
Crews have also mustered to complete bushfire recovery works in Chittering, Gingin and Bindoon.
"We know that there are still some customers who are without power following earlier severe weather (bushfire, storms and heatwave) conditions, rest assured we know your outages have been extended and frustrating and we are working hard to restore you as soon as we can," Western Power said.
All planned work is cancelled, except underground-specific works and works that are critical for fault response resources.
Spare resources will be assigned to the recovery effort.
"Full customer restoration will take a number of days and we are prioritising key sites requested by emergency services, critical infrastructure in areas where hospitals and other emergency services are located, high voltage bulk transmission lines that supply power to thousands of customers, and localised faults that affect clusters of homes and businesses," Western Power said.
"At this stage we can't deploy network generators until we have responded to all hazards and made safe.
"The damage we are seeing is widespread and generators will only help very small pockets.
"We're assessing where and when they can be used to ensure maximum community benefit.
"We'd urge the community to treat all damaged infrastructure as live just because your home or area is without power does not mean that all infrastructure in the area is non-operational.
"We would like to remind everyone, that if you see any damage to the network, please stay eight metres away and Make The Safe Call to Western Power on the emergency 24/7 number 13 13 51 so that emergency response crews can attend the hazard to make the area safe.
"On the ground, the safety of our crews and the community are of the highest importance.
"That's why customers may see crews attending a location where damage has occurred and then departing before power is restored.
"Our initial goal is to make damaged infrastructure safe prior to repair and restoration and we are working to complete these jobs as soon as safe to do so."
Customers who have experienced an outage for longer than 12 consecutive hours can apply for an extended outage payment via Extended Outages Payment once power is reconnected.
- More information: www.westernpower.com.au/faults-outages and emergency.wa.gov.au
