This winter had proved particularly challenging for lines companies to maintain supply, with multiple storms and high winds disrupting supply in most parts of the country at some stage.
Many of the disruptions were caused by trees that had become too high, falling or blowing branches onto lines causing them to arc out or come down, Electricity Networks Association chief executive Graeme Peters said.
His association wanted more power to compel landowners to trim trees far enough to not interfere with lines during wind.
“At present we don’t have this ability. For example, a 10m high tree may be only able to be 4m back from lines. It is still too close when wind affects it.”
The electricity (hazards from trees) regulations 2003 covered the threat.
“One of the things is to increase the distance of trees from lines.
“There is also a lot of silly bureaucracy around tree regulations.
“For example, if you want to issue a cut-and-trim notice it needs to be per tree required, which is not suitable if you are looking at a forest of trees.
“The landowner could make things difficult by requesting us to issue that notice per tree.”
Peters confirmed this has been a particularly difficult winter for maintaining electricity supply but a large portion of outages were attributable to trees on any given year.
“Some of our lines company members are spending $80 per customer per year to fix lines taken down by trees.
“Then there is the cost to customers of the power outage on top of that.”
