Perth residents are becoming used to an unreliable summer system, Queenslanders are still struggling to understand what is happening with their system, while Sydney had a taste last Wednesday when around 30,000 homes and businesses in the inner north-west were without electricity after a substation exploded in Gladesville.

The twelve hour blackout follows similar incidents in the city’s south-west two weeks ago and a troublesome peak-hour failure on the North Shore on Tuesday.

According to acting opposition energy and utilities spokeswoman Peta Seaton the Government took $169 million in dividends from EnergyAustralia last year and was forecast to take another $504 million over the next three years.

"Sydneysiders can be forgiven for thinking they are living in a Third World country after this spate of blackouts across the city," Seaton said.

"These blackouts will continue. It will become an almost daily occurrence as it has been in the last week, unless Bob Carr abandons his dividend policy, which is ripping millions of dollars out of power companies that should be being invested in maintenance and upgrade."

According to Seaton, EnergyAustralia admitted last year that 23 substations were overloaded and at increased risk of power failure.

However Energy and Utilities Minister Frank Sartor and EnergyAustralia chief executive Paul Broad fought back, highlighting almost $8 billion in infrastructure spending in the next five years.

"We're spending $2.2 billion over the next five years upgrading the network," said Broad.

"At this time of year we do our maintenance because loads are low, but because the weather has been a bit unusual, we have had a number of outages."

Broad said the dividends paid to the government were not causing problems with capital spending increasing over the past seven years from $170 million to $450 million.