After Cyclone Jasper: make it safe, get it back, and keep the lights on next time

What Jasper did

In the middle of December 2023 Cyclone Jasper came ashore north of the Shire and then sat over the region, and the rain that followed flooded the Douglas Shire harder than anyone here had seen. Roads were cut, homes and businesses went under water, and much of the Shire was without power for days.

The first three months

Between mid December and the end of March BH Electrics worked through 74 jobs that came straight out of the storm. Thirty-three of them were flood or water-damaged switchboards and circuits. Twelve were make-safes, isolating a building or part of one before anybody went back in. Ten were reconnections and defects flagged by Ergon, fourteen were storm damage to fans, lights and pumps, and the rest were power surges and damaged mains.

They ran from Port Douglas and Mossman out to Shannonvale, Wonga Beach, Cooya Beach, Craiglie and Daintree Village. The order of work never changes after a flood: make it safe, find out what is damaged and what is only wet, fix what has to be fixed, and only then put the power back on.

A pole down at Mowbray

At a property at Mowbray a tree came down on the property pole and took the power out. The job came in a week after the cyclone and the crew was on it in the first days of January.

The old meter box wiring was cut out and the underground conduits located, then a new footing was dug and poured and a new pole stood in a new position. New consumer mains, a new meter box and switchboard went on, the reconnection went through to Ergon, and the house was powered back up. The shed supply was moved across to the new pole, and the underground cable to the bore pump, damaged and now too short, was replaced.

Two ceiling fans damaged in the storm were replaced on a follow-up visit in February.

Then the calls changed

Once the power was back, two pubs, two backpacker hostels, a resort and the front office at Silkari Lagoons all wanted the same thing: a backup generator that takes over by itself, so the next long outage is an inconvenience rather than a week of lost trade.

Six properties, five generators. Rattle and Hum and Global Backpackers share one set, geared to run both buildings.

Measure first, then size it

A generator that is too small trips the moment the load comes on, and one that is too big costs more to buy and runs badly at light load. So where the load was not already known, it was measured rather than guessed. Power loggers went on the switchboards and recorded what the building actually draws, busiest hours included.

At Rattle and Hum the logger ran over two days in April 2024 and caught the evening peak, the pub and the backpackers together. Paddy’s whole building was metered the same month, and Mossman Resort was logged before its switchboard was replaced. The changeover and cabling at each site were set up for the load it has to carry, so what the generator is there for keeps running at 100 per cent when the grid goes. At Silkari Lagoons, where BH Electrics supplied the generator, it was sized to the normal day-to-day running load of the front office and reception.

What went in at each property

• Silkari Lagoons: a 60kVA diesel generator supplied by BH Electrics, a 125A automatic changeover behind the main switchboard, and a charging circuit, for the front office and reception
• Rattle and Hum and Global Backpackers: a 250A automatic changeover beside the main meter panel and a long cable tray run to a 110kVA generator behind the Ergon transformer
• Port Douglas Backpackers: a 250A automatic changeover for an 88kVA generator, surge protection, and two old single-phase meters removed with Ergon
• Paddy’s Irish Pub: a 250A automatic changeover for the main switchboard, a second 125A changeover for the rooftop plant, and surge protection on three boards
• Mossman Resort Holiday Villas: a new 500A outdoor main switchboard with CT metering, replacing the old board and its asbestos enclosure, and an automatic changeover on its own frame for a 100kVA generator

Automatic, so nobody has to know what to do

Every one of these installs switches over on its own. When the mains supply fails, the generator starts and the changeover moves the building onto it. When the grid comes back, it waits to be sure and moves the building back. The whole arrangement is interlocked so the generator can never feed back into the network, which matters, because a back-fed line is live for the Ergon crew working on it.

At Mossman Resort the system was commissioned with a simulated power cut and the staff were walked through how it works. In November 2025 Paddy’s had a full load test and a check of the automatic operation, and Rattle and Hum had an automatic-mode check and a 30-minute run under load.