Basslink has informed that the cable system, linking George Town in Tasmania and Loy Yang in Victoria, is expected to return to service at the end of May 2018, insted of April, following an outage that occurred during the planned maintenance works on the Basslink interconnector.
During the routine maintenance at a transition station in Victoria, a third party contractor damaged a piece of equipment, which required expertise and equipment from overseas for repair before the interconnector can recommence operations.
According to the company, a high-pressure system within a piece of equipment at the Victorian converter station has been repaired, and specialized tool needs to be deployed now to re-pressurize the equipment.
“For the past week, Basslink has worked around the clock in liaison with its manufacturing partners to develop a repair and re-pressurization procedure, source the necessary people and equipment, and finalize all associated logistics. While discussion around a number of these aspects continues, based on the latest available information, the anticipated return to service date has been revised to May 31, 2018,” Basslink said.
At this point in time, the fault only impacts the electricity interconnector, while the Basslink telecoms cable providing broadband services to internet service providers continues to operate.
The company added that this incident is unrelated to the outage in December 2015 and the ongoing dispute with the State of Tasmania.