Incident reporting and site preservation

Overview

From 16 May 2024 new duties come into effect requiring major electricity companies (MECs) and gas companies to preserve the site of incidents they report to Energy Safe Victoria in certain circumstances. There are no changes to the incident reporting requirements themselves.

These new site preservation requirements are one of the changes made to Victoria’s energy safety framework in the Energy Legislation Amendment (Energy Safety) Act 2023.

Guidelines

Following public consultation Energy Safe has finalised the Incident Reporting and Site Preservation Guidelines, which are to assist electricity suppliers and gas companies to understand and comply with their duties.

Updated 26 June 2024

The guidelines also include our current policy on:

• the types of incident sites we will typically attend before issuing a direction allowing site disturbance (incidents involving death or serious injury to a person, significant property damage, or significant disruption to the community)
• timeframes for site attendance and issuing directions allowing site disturbance (aim for site attendance within 4 hours in metropolitan Melbourne and 24 hours in regional Victoria).

Site preservation FAQs

We acknowledge that these are new arrangements and there will be an initial period of learning and adjustment. Our intention is to initially narrow the focus so that sites are preserved only at the most critical incident sites. This will allow industry to familiarise themselves with the new requirements and enable them to update their internal processes appropriately.

For further information see the FAQ document:

We will update this list over time to answer any additional questions.