Ergon Energy crews from far and wide descended on Kingaroy to continue work on a $500,000-plus upgrade of the power supply for the Central Business District. Manager Regional Services Craig Harris said the major upgrade of the Kingaroy East feeder was required to provide for the increased demand from customers in the town’s main business district.

“This project involves replacing the poles in Haly Street and stringing new aluminium conductor with greater capacity in this section of the 11,000-V feeder,” Harris said.

“The load on the system during the week means this work has to be carried out on Sundays, which also enables us to minimize the disruption to businesses and community.

“But unfortunately we have not been able to maintain supply to all customers during this work and we apologize to those customers who have or will be affected by the outages required so this work can be done safely.”

Harris said the impact on customers was being further minimized by bringing in crews and equipment from Yarraman, Murgon, Proston, Gayndah, Maryborough, Dalby and Toowoomba to assist the local crews.

“The crews have made excellent progress during the outages of about six hours on two recent Sundays and the pole replacement component of the project has now been completed. “There will be another influx of crews on Sunday, March 8, to complete the work, including running the new powerlines.

“Once completed, the project will deliver a safer and more reliable power supply to the Kingaroy CBD and other customers on this feeder, as well as catering for further commercial and residential expansion,” Harris said.