Right now, in this order
People first
Anyone still touching something live stays untouched until the power is off. Call 000 for injuries, fire or smoke.
Main switch off, only if it's safe
Don't reach for it if the meter box is wet, smoking or sparking, or you'd be standing in water.
Network or electrician?
Street dark or a line down: your network's faults line below. A problem only inside your home: a licensed electrician. Storm damage to the building: the SES on 132 500.
Leave damaged things off
Anything wet, scorched or hit by a branch stays off until a licensed electrician has checked it.
Melbourne's faults lines
CitiPower: 13 12 80
The CBD and inner suburbs. CitiPower and Powercor share an outage map that shows unplanned faults with crew arrival and estimated restoration times.
Powercor: 13 24 12
Werribee, Melton, Point Cook and the rest of the western suburbs.
Jemena: 131 626
North-west Melbourne, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
United Energy: 13 20 99
Covers Melbourne's south-east and down the Mornington Peninsula. It tells people to keep more than 10 metres from a fallen line and assume it's live.
AusNet Services: 13 17 99
Melbourne's north and east. Pole and line damage can also be reported online, but those reports don't appear on its Outage Tracker straight away. Customers on life support equipment have a priority line: 1800 818 832.
A powerline is down: keep back and report it
Energy Safe Victoria says to stay more than 8 to 10 metres from a fallen powerline and report it to the network and the police, and to call 000 if lives are in danger. A line brought down in a storm can be hidden under branches, so look up and around before you walk through debris. Keep children and pets inside.
What Melbourne's storms and heatwaves do to the power
Most of Melbourne's severe weather comes with cold fronts. Hot north-westerlies ahead of them can reach gale force before the cool change arrives. On 13 February 2024, severe winds and thousands of lightning strikes cut power to about 180,000 United Energy customers. In late August 2024, AusNet's longest weather event in over a decade caused around 93,000 outages, with Cardinia Shire and the Yarra Ranges among the worst hit.
Heat does it too. After three days over 43 °C in 2009, more than 500,000 Melbourne residents were without power on the evening of 30 January.
In events like these the network restores its own lines first. Once your street is back, anything on your side that's still dead, wet or damaged is a job for a licensed electrician.
Is it the network or your wiring?
Check the neighbours and the streetlights, then your network's outage map or tracker. If only your home is out, look for a tripped safety switch or breaker, unplug what's on that circuit and reset it once. If it trips again, or nothing has tripped, call the network if the supply may be at fault and an electrician for anything inside.
If the line from the pole to your house is damaged, call the network first. On CitiPower and Powercor, if they find a defect on your side of the connection, such as a loose service hook, you'll get a defect notice to have it repaired. Private power poles explains who owns what.
Getting an urgent job to a Melbourne electrician
There's no 24-hour line here, and we can't promise how fast anyone responds. If we have a licence-checked electrician near you who takes urgent fault work, we pass your job to them and they contact you. Pick Something's not working in the form, then Today, it's urgent, and tell them what tripped and what's still off.
If it happened at our place
We'd have the right faults number saved before the storm, not after. Look up which of the five networks you're on today, put its number in every phone in the house, and add AusNet's life support line if someone depends on powered equipment. Make sure everyone knows where the main switch is and how to reach it in the dark.
Want a specialist to sort it?
Tell us the job and your postcode. We match the licence-checked local electrician who does this kind of work, and they call you. No ring-around, and your number goes to them alone.