Powerlink Queensland hosted its annual sector-wide Exercise Wirraway on October 13 to test emergency response arrangements ahead of summer.
Exercise Wirraway is an exercise where organisations involved in power generation, transmission and distribution work collaboratively to test emergency response processes and communications arrangements to add further resilience to Queensland’s power system.
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More than 50 key energy sector representatives—including power generators, transmission and distribution networks—met to test emergency response arrangements for Queensland’s power system over the summer period.
Organisations present included Powerlink, Energy Queensland (Ergon and Energex), CleanCo, Stanwell, CS Energy and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).
Summer traditionally sees higher demand for electricity and more extreme weather events, including cyclones and bushfires.
Powerlink CEO Paul Simshauser said, “Exercises like this are an important part of our annual preparations for the summer season. We test our emergency procedures for a range of scenarios including extreme weather events such as cyclones, storms and bushfires.
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“The exercise brings together all parts of Queensland’s electricity supply chain in the one room to not only test existing processes, but also identify how we can make further improvements to the resilience of our network.
“While Queensland’s power system is very resilient, it’s vital we regularly test how the sector responds to emergency events.”
