Thousands of Victorians remain without electricity as inquiry launched into mass power outages

A worker inspects a damaged transmission tower at Anakie, Victoria on 14 February. More than 3,100 customers remain without power a week after the storms. Photograph: Con Chronis/EPA

An independent panel of experts is set to review the response by energy companies to the destructive storms that left more than half a million homes without power in Victoria, as thousands continue to wait for their electricity to be restored a week on.

The state’s energy minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, on Tuesday said the panel would review the preparedness of energy distribution businesses to respond to last week’s catastrophic storm event.

She said they will be asked to investigate how each energy company managed the incident and worked to restore supply, as well as their communication with customers during the outage.

The inquiry will also look at whether there were enough crews deployed during the outage and “if there were any material opportunities that could have enabled a more rapid reconnection of customers”.

Speaking in question time, D’Ambrosio said she had heard from members of the community who had a “lot of questions” about the outage, primarily around the communication of the energy companies.

“We’ve heard from communities about lack of communications, late communications, inadequate communications, website crashing, when text messages were sent having missing links – all of these practical immediate supports that communities went without,” she said.

“We’re going to get to the answers. We’re going to deliver. We’re going to get the recommendations and we’re going to act on those.”

D’Ambrosio said the members of the panel, as well as its scope, would be provided in coming days.

More than 3,100 customers remain without power a week after the storms, which brought down 12,000km power lines across the state and flattened a transmission line in Anakie near Geelong. This included about 2,620 homes and 500 businesses, with the overwhelming majority AusNet customers located in Victoria’s east.

Energy Safe Victoria, the state’s energy regulator, has already begun investigating the collapse of the six towers, which caused Loy Yang A power station to trip and left an additional 90,000 homes without power.

The Australia Energy Market Operator was also investigating the system response and security.

D’Ambrosio said the expert review would complement that work.

She denied the government had only stood up the inquiry after the opposition on Monday announced its own proposal for one.

“This has been a discussion that we’ve been having internally now for a couple of days,” D’Ambrosio told reporters.

The opposition leader, John Pesutto, said the Coalition still plans to move a motion in the upper house this week to set up a parliamentary inquiry into the storms, as well as the reliability and stability of the state’s energy distribution networks .

He claimed the Victorian government’s inquiry “will not be fair dinkum”.

Speaking earlier on Tuesday, the emergency services minister, Jaclyn Symes, said Mirboo North in the Gippsland region was the “epicentre” of storm damage, with authorities still assessing the exact number of “uninhabitable homes”.

“There are a variety of pockets around the state, particularly those that are at the end of the line of power supply, that are still off,” Symes said.

“The advice is that about 2,500 [customers] will be the long tail. We are working closely with AusNet … they are throwing everything at this. It is down to house by house connections that can take some time.”

Symes warned more wild weather had been forecast for the state, with high temperatures forecast in the Mallee and Northern Victoria regions, as well as “heavy downpours” on Thursday.

Authorities would provide more detail on Wednesday, she said.