Sour milk
DAIRY farmers from Middle Tarwin are frustrated power outages associated with the Bald Hills Wind Farm keep affecting their farms.
Their concerns boiled over last Tuesday (December 9), when a scheduled power outage was delayed by nine hours, forcing several farmers to milk in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
Farmer Stephen Ball said the outage was scheduled between 8.30am to 4.30pm on Tuesday, but power was not returned until 1.30am Wednesday.
“I feel that is extremely unacceptable. They don’t seem to follow a schedule very well,” he said.
“I milked the cows as soon as it came back on at 1.30am, when I would normally start at 5pm. The problem with not milking on time is that it can cause loss of production and mastitis and the farmer gets really tired.”
Mr Ball said there are several dairy farms on the same powerline and he was not the only one affected.
“There have been quite a few scheduled outages, a lot of them between 4.30pm to 5.30pm – right on milking time,” he said.
Mr Ball was so frustrated by the outage last Tuesday, he went for a drive at midnight and spoke to electricity workers.
“They didn’t even know what was going on,” he said.
Farmer Rod Cope was also upset by the outage.
“We are lucky because we have a generator for the dairy, but our water supply was affected and the cows have dropped in production,” he said.
“I am over it. This is not the first time it has happened and what they’re doing is really inconvenient. Turning off power between 4.30pm and 5.30pm, sometimes for less than 10 minutes, really stuffs up milking.”
Mr Cope said the first scheduled outage was in September, and he has experienced at least 10 more since then.
“It isn’t every day, but sometimes the power is out three or four times a week. Last week it was three times. It really is a pain,” he said.
“Yesterday was just ridiculous, to have it off all day. We are lucky as the generator meant we could milk.
“When you have got 430 cows needing water, that’s about 90,000 litres a day. We had enough stored to get through to milking last night, but after that there was no water until power came back on.”
Mr Cope said lack of water, even for just a few hours, can affect milk production and cows’ moods.
“I am going to try and organise a meeting with Powercor and as many farmers as I can to find out what they can do for us,” he said.
Farmer Tim Bright did not finish milking until 4am and then had to milk again at 11am.
“It is yet to be known if the disruption to their schedule will affect production. They are down a bit today (Wednesday) but we will have to wait and see on the mastitis,” he said.
“They send out notices to let us know (about power outages), but all of the little ones in the middle of milking time when it goes off for three or four minutes often send milk flying everywhere,” he said.
“The most frustrating part about last night (Tuesday) is that they kept telling us it was going to come back on within the hour each time we called.
“The thing was Tarwin Lower went back on, but the farms up towards Middle Tarwin didn’t. There are a lot of people in the district very upset about it.”
CitiPower and Powercor Australia external affairs manager Drew Douglas said Powercor Network Services was working as a contractor to Bald Hills Wind Farm to construct the powerlines associated with the project.
“As part of these works last Tuesday (December 9), a scheduled planned outage was delayed and took much longer than planned for customers in the vicinity,” he said.
“Unfortunately, some preparation works required for the project were found to be damaged once our crews reached that area and this unexpected situation resulted in significant delays, up to four hours, to the scheduled works.”
Mr Douglas said as a result of the unexpected issues, Powercor Network Services reduced the works for the day in attempt to mitigate against delaying the outage.
“Once it became dark, safety requirements slowed down the pace to complete Tuesday’s planned works,” he said.
“Powercor Network Services apologies to Ausnet Services customers affected and have taken steps to ensure future works on this project stay on schedule.”
McMillan MP Russell Broadbent was contacted by several farmers affected by the power outage.
“My office has been contacted in regards to the outage and has called Ausnet Services to ask the operations of dairy farms in the region be given more consideration,” he said.
“Power is crucial to the daily activities of dairy farms and an outage generally has far more serious ramifications than when other consumers lose power.”
Had enough: Middle Tarwin dairy farmers Stephen Ball, Kylie, Tim and Jai Bright, Rod Cope and Johan Reesink are fed up with power outages affecting their dairy operations.
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