Another Primus outage hits Melbourne

A three-hour outage suffered by Primus' Melbourne datacentre over the weekend was due to a backup generator failing to start, according to the telco's managing director Ravi Bhartia.

Bhartia blamed the problem on an electric fault at the Citipower substation for the outage that occurred late yesterday afternoon. "Yesterday, a CitiPower substation had a high voltage fault, and the fuse blew," he explained this morning.

Despite recently installing extra generators, the fault prevented one of Primus' backup generators from starting at the time, said Bhartia. Primus was seeking to move off CitiPower's supply, he said.

"We identified that we have to become totally independent of CitiPower supply. As a result of that, a lot of work is going on and that work is not yet completed," he said.

In a letter to customers over the weekend, Primus conceded yesterday's problems were similar to what it had experienced several months ago and flagged that work at the CitiPower substation would continue next weekend.

Bhartia said he did not expect any further problems and that Primus was completing a total revamp of its power distribution system. "We're installing extra generators, upgrading transformers, moving to a lower voltage distribution system, and upgrading battery power," he said.