Essential Energy – cancellation of planned work including ASP outages

As an employer of more than 3,000 people located throughout the State delivering critical services to communities across NSW, it is vital that Essential Energy responds effectively to the unfolding Coronavirus (COVID19) crisis.

Essential Energy has enacted its Pandemic Management Plan and established a Pandemic Preparedness Team (PPT) to proactively manage our organisational response.

The PPT, made up of representatives from across our business, is meeting daily and will continue to meet throughout the crisis as it unfolds. The PPT is continually monitoring and assessing COVID-19 developments and recommendations, including from the Commonwealth and NSW governments, in order to shape an effective business response.

This has led us to enact some specific control measures for our frontline staff, office-based workers and across the network.

As part of our response to minimise the impact and spread of COVID-19, Essential Energy is suspending all planned outages, including those that involve ASP work, from Wednesday 18 March 2020, until Friday, 17 April 2020.

There may be further changes beyond these dates as this pandemic progresses.

As you would appreciate, planned outage work often involves teams from multiple sites or frontline employees working with ASPs. This work is being suspended to minimise the potential for COVID-19 transmission amongst employees, contractors and the community in line with recommendations for social distancing.

We understand these changes may be difficult to accommodate, but we assure you we have not made his decision lightly. Ultimately, we have a responsibility to keep a safe and reliable power supply on for our customers across regional, rural and remote NSW, especially at a time where different members of the community may need to self-isolate. Regrettably, we have concluded that that these arrangements are necessary to enable us to continue to meet our obligations.

Text messages will be sent out to affected ASPs today informing them of the situation. We will reschedule all outages after consultation with our ASP partners when possible.

Essential Energy is committed to doing everything we can to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The safety of our people and the community is our highest priority, and we believe that the steps we have taken today are necessary in these unprecedented times.

We thank you for your patience and understanding during this time.