By Cason Ho

Copyright abc

More than 15,000 homes and businesses were without electricity after the entire regional city of Kalgoorlie-Boulder lost power.

Power outages are a recurring problem for the Goldfields town, which is on the edge of southern WA’s interconnected power grid.

More than 30,000 people live in the outback city.

At the peak of the outage about 10:30am AWST, 15,277 properties across the Goldfields, including Coolgardie, were without electricity.

Western Power said it was able to restore power to most of those customers by 12:30pm.

“We undertook restoration in a controlled, staged approach to ensure no further damage or issues occurred,” the utility said in a statement.

It said the outage had happened during scheduled works.

It is the third major blackout in the mining city in less than two years.

Businesses and schools have been posting to social media to alert people about disruptions due to the power outage.

In a statement, the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Community High School said it was adjusting to “tech-free programs” for the day.

“Canteen will be open at recess — cash only, cold food only. The canteen will be closed at lunch,” the school posted on social media.

Businesses hit hard

Audiologist Lily, 29, said she was working with clients when the outage occurred.

“Luckily I saved everything and I can do my work later … I think it impacts the business pretty significantly,” she said.

“It means we have to turn people away, all of our clients get rescheduled.”

Chloe, 27, who was at work in a cafe which closed due to the outage, said it felt like “standard procedure” in Kalgoorlie.

“Thankfully we’ve got generators and things that can keep fridges going but, yeah, definitely hospitality, it’s a big hit every time.”

Jasmine, 11, said she was shopping with her family when everything went dark.

“The lights just turned off and everybody freaked out and we all got told to check out and then leave,” she said.

Recurring problem

The region has been hit by repeated blackouts over more than a decade.

The last major outage, which affected both the Goldfields and Wheatbelt regions, was in the summer of 2024 when tens of thousands of people were left without power.

Gas-powered backup generators across Kalgoorlie failed to kick in after a thunderstorm crumpled critical transmission infrastructure.

Eight months later, another blackout hit about 20,000 Western Power customers, prompting the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Mayor Glenn Wilson to call for urgent action to secure reliable power for the region.

In November, the WA government said it had secured additional backup power generation for the city through TransAlta, sourced from mining giant BHP’s Nickel West operations after they were temporarily suspended.

Asked on Wednesday morning about when the government would address power insecurity in the region, acting Premier Rita Saffioti said it was a “priority”.

“We took a major commitment to the election in relation to supporting a new battery out there in the Goldfields,” she said.

“We’ll continue to work very closely with Western Power on how we can improve the resilience in the meantime.”

Visit Emergency WA, call DFES on 133 337, or listen to ABC Local Radio to stay up to date.