Our 'Strike Finder' tool is helping us speed up the restoration of power to customers affected by lightning storms

Recently, South Australia experienced over 250,000 lightning strikes, causing widespread damage to our network. These strikes led to more than 150 outages, affecting over 36,000 customers.

Network Reliability Operations Manager, Kym Williams, explains that with 80% of our network above ground, severe weather can impact supply performance. “Lightning is a major cause of network interruptions, so we developed the 'Strike Finder' tool to help identify where and when lightning causes outages," he says. 

Kym explains that this is not an uncommon occurrence. "With 80% of our network above ground, severe weather has a significant impact on supply performance." 

How It Works 

Strike Finder is used during storms to locate lightning strikes near our powerlines. This lets us send crews directly to these areas to check for damage, reducing the time it takes to patrol rural and remote lines. 

For example, a single-wire earth return (SWER) line—a single powerline running pole-to-pole—can be over 100 km long, and patrolling the entire line takes up to six hours. With Strike Finder, we can focus on strikes that occurred within 500 meters of our lines at the time of the outage. This targeted approach helps crews restore power much faster by avoiding full-length patrols. 

Kym notes, “Strike Finder has been a game-changer, especially for rural and remote areas, cutting patrol times by about 70% and helping crews restore power faster during widespread storms.” 

Picture: Cloud-to-ground lightning strike near Birdseye Highway, pinpointed on Strike Finder, showing its proximity to the affected powerline. 

Success in Action 

Works Coordinator Jace adds, “Our recent experience with Strike Finder has been extremely positive. It helps us pinpoint lightning strike locations for both remotely monitored lines, which log the exact time of the outage, and for non-monitored lines, using customer-reported interruption times. This allows crews to go straight to likely damage areas, reducing the need to patrol long stretches of line—often through difficult-to-access areas like paddocks.” 

One critical aspect of this process is identifying the sometimes small and hard-to-spot damage caused by lightning strikes. Damage can be as minor as a pinhole or a hairline fracture in equipment—difficult to detect with the naked eye but significant enough to disrupt power supply. By focusing on areas highlighted by Strike Finder, crews can efficiently locate and address even these subtle issues. 

Pictured: Pinhole lightning strike on an insulator

“Using Strike Finder as a starting point, combined with customer reports, has allowed us to locate lightning damage to our equipment more efficiently,” Jace explains. “We’ve seen it in action, identifying downed wires or blown transformers, which helps us restore power to customers sooner.” 

Looking Ahead 

As our network faces the ongoing challenges of severe weather, tools like Strike Finder are proving invaluable in helping us respond more quickly and efficiently. By reducing patrol times and pinpointing damage areas, we're not only restoring power faster but also improving reliability for customers across South Australia. With continued innovation and dedication from our teams, we’re better prepared than ever to weather the storms and keep communities connected.