Power outage payment in South East Queensland: what the guaranteed service levels owe you

Storm season in South East Queensland usually starts in October, and with it comes the night the street goes dark and nobody can say when it comes back. Most people assume that is just bad luck. It is not always. There is a payment scheme written into the rules that govern Energex, and it is one of the least known entitlements on an electricity bill.

Who pays: Energex, not your retailer

Your retailer sells you the electricity. Energex owns the poles and wires and fixes them when they fail. The outage payments come from the network, not from your retailer, and they are set by the Queensland Competition Authority in the Electricity Distribution Network Code. Its review of guaranteed service levels covers the five years from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2030, and the authority made its final decision in December 2023.

That has one practical consequence. Changing retailer makes no difference to a payment for an outage. The scheme is the same for every household on the Energex network.

How long is too long without power?

A household is eligible for a payment when a single outage lasts longer than a set time, and the time depends on the kind of feeder that supplies the street:

• more than 8 hours on a feeder serving the Brisbane CBD
• more than 18 hours on an urban or short rural feeder, which covers most suburban homes in South East Queensland
• more than 24 hours on a long rural or isolated feeder

The authority kept these thresholds for the 2025 to 2030 period. If you are not sure which type of feeder supplies you, ask Energex.

What about lots of short outages?

A separate payment applies when a home has too many interruptions in one financial year, even if none was long. The thresholds in the decision are 10 for a CBD feeder, 13 for an urban feeder and 21 for a short rural, long rural or isolated feeder. You can only receive one frequency payment a year. The authority also changed what counts: from the new period, an interruption of three minutes or less is excluded, where it used to be one minute or less. That means a flicker that resets the clocks does not add to the tally.

The other situations that earn a payment

Outages are the best known, but the same scheme covers a few other failures. Energex owes a payment if it does not give at least four business days' notice of a planned interruption (emergencies are exempt), if a connection or reconnection is late, if it turns up late to an appointment, or if it disconnects you wrongly. A wrongful disconnection payment sits outside the annual limit that applies to the others.

Do you have to ask?

Not at first. Under the code, Energex has to use its best endeavours to pay automatically. If that does not happen and you think you qualify, you have three months from the date of the outage to lodge a claim. For the yearly frequency payment, the three months run from the end of the financial year, so a count that reached the threshold in 2026 to 2027 can be claimed after 30 June 2027. Keep a note of the date and time the power went out and came back, because a claim needs them.

What the payment is not

The authority is blunt about this. The payments acknowledge the inconvenience of poor service. They are not intended to compensate for loss or inconvenience, so they do not replace a claim on your home and contents insurance for a fridge of food or a damaged appliance. Not every interruption counts either: the code lists exclusions, and whether yours is one of them is for Energex to say. If you think you were owed a payment and did not get it, you can ask Energex to explain, and take it to the Energy and Water Ombudsman Queensland if you are not satisfied.

The cost of these payments can be recovered through regulated network charges, which means they are ultimately funded by the people on the network. That is a reason to claim what you are owed, not a reason to skip it.

If the power is out for days

A storm that takes the power out for days is a different situation, and the Queensland Government has a separate grant for it. We cover it in what help you can get when a storm leaves you without power for days.

What to do after an outage

1. Write down when the power went off and when it came back, with the street address.
2. Wait for any automatic payment. If nothing arrives and the outage was past the threshold for your feeder, claim within three months.
3. Keep receipts if you had to throw food out or pay for something, and ask your home and contents insurer about those separately.
4. Once the lights are on, look at your bill. Outage payments are the network's business, but the rest of the bill is yours to shop around. Our answer on why a bill can be high lists the usual causes.
5. If you are on a plan you picked years ago, compare what is on the market now.