Residents of an outback town left without power after devastating storms could be eligible for more compensation as the state premier points the finger at the network operator.
Repeat outages in NSW town of Broken Hill and surrounding areas followed thunderstorms on October 17 that brought down transmission towers.
Backup generators delivered only intermittent electricity to 20,000 locals for six days, which included periods of power failures that forced some businesses to temporarily shut down.
During a visit to Broken Hill on Friday, Premier Chris Minns said compensation for affected firms was possible and he would not be surprised if some pursued legal action against network operator Transgrid.
The NSW government has already provided support payments of $200 for residents and up to $400 for businesses.
"'I'm not going to close the door on future compensation, particularly for retail stores ... I don't want to see them go out the door backwards because of no fault of their own," Mr Minns said.
Transgrid still had questions to answer over the power failure, he said, despite the region being reconnected to the grid a week earlier.
"This was a natural disaster, electricity should have been supplied and it wasn't," Mr Minns said.
"(Transgrid has) a contract to supply power to this town and it doesn't matter what they say ... the lights went out."
Investigations were under way and the Australian Energy Regulator had the power to impose multimillion-dollar fines if there was a breach of the operator's obligations.
Retail power providers Origin, Energy Australia and AGL agreed to defer bills for impacted customers, while NAB and ANZ offered hardship grants.
Transgrid said it had already contributed $1.5 million to the government's community-support package and would continue to support residents with grants.
The NSW government on Friday announced a deal with Hydrostor to boost energy-storage capacity in Broken Hill.
The company has been tasked with establishing the Silver City compressed-air facility after a 65-year lease was granted near the Potosi mine site.
The project has been touted as an emission-free power solution capable of supporting the grid for up to eight hours.
The outage had demonstrated the need for more electricity solutions, Environment Minister Penny Sharpe said.
“This project will replace the older, large-scale back-up diesel generator, preventing a repeat of the recent energy emergency in the far-west region of NSW.”
