An Orelia resident has raised questions about Western Power’s outage communications after saying their section of the suburb lost power from about 9am with no advance warning.

In a post to r/perth, the poster said the outage was later listed as a “planned outage”, but claimed there had been no letter, no prior website notice, and no warning before power went off.

The screenshot attached to the post showed a Western Power outage notice estimating restoration at 3:30pm, listing 58 customers affected in Orelia, and saying the outage had been “reported 9 days ago”. The Reddit user said the notice only appeared on the outage page after the blackout had already started.

Everything Perth has not independently verified whether all affected households received notice, or whether the outage was correctly classified as planned work. But the complaint has drawn attention because Western Power’s public information says customers affected by scheduled maintenance should be notified in advance by email, SMS or mail.

Western Power also runs a non-notification claim process for planned work. Its website says customers may be eligible for a $50 service standard payment if they did not receive at least 72 hours’ notice of a planned outage, provided the outage meets the other eligibility criteria and the claim is made within 60 days.

Some Reddit commenters said they had received email notices for planned outages in other cases, while others said they had experienced similar situations where a scheduled outage was not visible online until after power had already gone out.

For residents, the central issue is not just inconvenience. Advance warning can matter for people working from home, households with medical equipment, refrigerated medication, home businesses, or families trying to plan around hours without power.

If the Orelia outage was planned work and affected customers were not properly notified, residents may be able to use Western Power’s non-notification claim pathway. Affected households can also request outage information from Western Power if they need confirmation of outage timing or cause for their address.

Sources: r/perth Reddit post; Western Power non-notification claim information; Western Power scheduled maintenance information.