BRANCH REPORTS
WA BRANCH REPORT
T
he Western Australian Branch celebrated the opening of 2020 with a successful professional development meeting at St John of God Hospital in Midland. At the same time on the far horizon the threat of the COVID-19 virus was beginning to make itself known. By the beginning of March it was having an impact in Western Australia. The March branch meeting hosted by Western Power’s Mr John Righetti had to be scaled back to accommodate the emerging COVID-19 restrictions. The original agenda included a site visit the Western Power State Control Centre, sadly this had to be abandoned at the last minute to protect these essential workers from potential infection. Nevertheless, our attending members were thoroughly enthralled with the delivery of two excellent presentations. The first was a reflective overview of a bush fire event that threatened Perth’s power supply network in January 2020. The presenter Mr Malcolm (Mal) Basketter (Network Control team Leader) lead us step-by-step on how Western Power manage network emergencies. From being aware of threats, how they responded, and in greater detail how they managed a number of critical power network events in recent history (bushfire, generation failures, storms) – so as to maintain power supply to customers across the South West Interconnected Network (SWIN) of Western Australia. The members responded with a deluge of questions and discussions that could have easily consumed the rest of our meeting time.
In addition to value of the first session, our members were privileged to be the audience of Western Power strategic development and planning team’s Ms Mel Mercer Royce (Senior Strategy Analyst) & Richard Barnett (Senior Planning Engineer / Grid Solution) who shared Western Power’s future directions and plans to meet Perth’s growing power requirements. We were shown an informative presentation of Perth’s power demands and how Western Power intends on meeting the future, with network supported micro grids that supplement with solar power and battery banks.
Meeting chair and State Secretary Mr Andrew Waugh thanked Mr John Righetti and his team for such an informative and entertaining evening by presenting them with a bottle of Hand Sanitiser (at the time more valuable than gold). Thank you to Andrew for arranging this excellent meeting.
During general business State Vice President Mr Fred Foley presented member Mr Len Mumme with his 10 year certificate. During Len’s response, he enlightened us with his observations on when he joined the IHEA and how the IHEA WA has grown into the professional body it is today without losing its personal touch. As the COVID-19 restrictions tightened in Western Australia it was clear that it was no longer possible to hold safe
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