Nervous Aura locals took to social media during a power outage on November 11, speculating about the area’s grid after last summer’s “blackouts.”

Residents urged each other to “stop pumping the air con” and “turn off car chargers,” blaming a grid overload and poor infrastructure planning on the outage.

But the official word from Energex attributed the outage to an underground cable fault in Aura Avenue at 7:34pm affecting 2,600 customers.

According to an Energex spokesperson, technicians said it was an asset earth failure (a fault in the grounding system of a transformer, circuit or cable) and not overload related.

Enraged locals were convinced the presence of an Energex generator in the area was proof the grid was overloaded, and no underground fault had occurred, with one keyboard warrior suggesting The Aura Post had “struck a deal” with Energex to publicise the underground cable fault.

Energex confirmed generators were on site to carry load when crews were conducting any emergency or maintenance work right across the country, often for weeks at a time.

“To allow for further growth and a more robust network on the southern Sunshine Coast, this year Energex began construction on a more than $100 million new network that will feed Aura and surrounding suburbs stretching 11 kilometres from Meridan Plains and finishing at a new substation to be built at Bells Creek,” the spokesperson said.

“This project is expected to be completed early 2027.

“Furthermore, with the new network and Bells Creek substation online, it will take significant load off the existing Caloundra substation and will be particularly beneficial during severe weather events – allowing our technical staff to divert power between both areas, enabling faster restoration if storms or other unexpected issues interrupt supply.”

Energex also provided details of the outages experienced in Aura during the early summer season of 2024.

“We had three outages in this year’s early summer season,” the spokesperson said.

“On 9 January, there was an outage caused by an underground fault that affected 3,759 customers in the estate.

“On 23 February, there was an outage affecting 68 Aura customers – no cause was found.

“On 28 February, there was an outage affecting 36 Aura customers – damage at a pillarbox.”

Further speculation Energex could remotely access residents’ smart meters to “stabilise the grid” during overload was refuted by the provider, though they did provide additional information on the opt-in Peak-Smart air conditioning and hot water economy tariff.

“For more than 50 years, Energex has been able to switch off hot water systems as part of the off-peak tariff system – more than 700,000 Energex customers already have this in their homes.

“This is done remotely most days by Energex sending a switch on/off signal through the network – more information about off peak tariff electricity can be found at www.energex.com.au/manage-your-energy,” the spokesperson said.

“Similarly, many Energex customers over the past 15 years signed up to the PeakSmart program which allows Energex to remotely scale down the compressor on air conditioners to conserve load – the air conditioner’s fan continues to work.

“This happens from time to time, and customers rarely notice it happening – more information about PeakSmart can be found at www.energex.com.au/manage-your-energy/cashback-rewards-program/peaksmart-air-conditioning.”

According to Aura-based solar battery specialist Circuit Alert, residents tired of outages could install a battery system which will provide power to essential loads such as fridges, lights, general power sockets, TV, internet and fans during a blackout.

Circuit Alert manager Martin Rudd said a well-designed, quality home battery system linked with a hybrid inverter could save households serious money on electricity costs by storing excess solar energy generated in daylight hours that can be used at night.

“When the system is being designed, you will need to consider which circuits you would like blackout protection for as each system has different capabilities,” Mr Rudd said.

“7.2kWh is considered small and 11kWh is considered the norm; however, we do regularly install more than 50kWh on some large homes.

“Your installer will need to consider the required solar system size needed to support the battery, this is important to get right as getting it wrong can damage the battery and void the warranty.”