This announcement was made by State Premier Peter Beattie and Energy Minister Stephen Robertson at a Community Cabinet meeting in Townsville. Both Beattie and Robertson explained the A$480 million was for “network maintenance, new infrastructure and operational projects”.

“Ongoing preventive maintenance is essential to ensure Ergon Energy’s 580,000 customers can have confidence in the network’s ability to reliably handle current and future demand,” said Beattie who also promised between A$3 million to A$4 million of the additional A$17 million would be spent “the northern region, based on Townsville”.

According to Robertson, Ergon Energy’s preventive maintenance program is about assets which have the greatest impact on reliability and on performance. “Ergon Energy will outlay the $17 million across regional Queensland to standardise and improve preventive maintenance programs including better inspection, testing, asset information and defect reporting processes. Ergon Energy [will] also be improving the management of its public lighting assets and accelerating its light replacement program.”

“This is a continuation of Ergon Energy’s strategic five-year plan and follows on from the state-of-the-art network inspection and defect management system which has seen around A$70 million a year over the last two years spent in improved maintenance of line assets through implementing the latest technology,” added Robertson.

At the end of the day, according to Robertson, Ergon Energy is about making use of the latest technology to maintain Queensland’s electricity network. “Ergon Energy [has] invested in the latest technology available, including digital mapping, handheld computers, global positioning systems and digital photography to inspect and maintain its electricity network.”

“Queensland’s entire electricity distribution network territory is six times the size of Victoria’s so it is important to see Ergon Energy using this type of technology and increasing its maintenance spend,” added Robertson who also revealed the company’s expenditure this year would have hit the A$2 billion mark “spent on new assets, and maintaining and improving the existing network since Ergon Energy was formed”.