Malcolm McKellar has been in a struggle for power for the last 14 years. But unlike the fights for political power that are taking place at the moment, it's electricity provider Ergon Energy that Mr McKellar has been battling against.

Repeated extended blackouts in what Mr McKellar describes as the "Greater Mossman" area (Oak Beach to Daintree Village, but excluding Port Douglas) over the years have been attributed to an inadequate 66kV power line.

"Typically the longer ones are caused by storm activity or other failures on the Tablelands that bring down the old and bedraggled 66kV line that wanders from Mareeba all over Mt. Molloy and Julatten and ultimately arrives at the Cassowary Substation at the foot of the Rex Range near South Mossman," Mr McKellar said.

He said several shorter blackout are also experienced by residents due to vehicle accidents, falling branches, and equipment failure.

Mr McKellar has kept an extensive log of power outages. In the last eleven weeks he has recorded seven "significant" power outages with an average duration of 2 hours and 9 minutes and at least twelve further failures ranging between a couple of seconds and a minute.

"As you would realise (the short outages) still have the ability to do enormous damage to home and business electronic equipment, not to mention people’s confidence in posting accounts or putting a cake in the oven," he said.

Port Douglas' supply was secured when it was upgraded to a 132kV line in the mid-1990s, an upgrade Mr McKellar said is long overdue for the rest of the region.

“When is Ergon going to honour its promise to disconnect the 66kV supply at the Cassowary Substation, and to convert the approximately 6,000 non-Port Douglas residents of the ‘Greater Mossman’ area still on that line onto the highly reliable 132kV supply, and to bring them into the 21st Century as far as electricity supply reliability is concerned?”

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Ergon's Manager for Regional Services Northern, Geoff Bowes, agrees that service levels are currently not up to scratch, but stopped short at blaming the system.

"Your reader (Mr McKellar) seems to assume that recent power interruptions to the area are the result of a lack of capacity in the network. This is not the case," he said.

"Our records indicate eight outages have affected the area since 1 December 2011. Ergon Energy apologises to customers for the inconvenience of these events and is reviewing strategies to improve the performance of the local network.

"It is not performing to our expectations and we understand this is not acceptable to our customers. The outages have had a variety of causes, namely motor vehicle accidents, wildlife and storm activity."

Mr Bowes attributed one particular outage to a snake that had made its way on to Ergon Energy equipment causing a malfunction.

He said that storm activity in the region was also affecting the service but Ergon crews had worked hard to restore power quickly.

"While we have been fortunate not to have experienced cyclones so far this year, there has been significant storm and lightning activity.  These storms have affected the 66kv feeders between Mossman and Mareeba and brought down power lines and damaged poles. On these occasions crews have worked in very poor weather conditions to safely restore supply as quickly as possible."

Mr Bowes denied the company had made any promises to customers about an upgrade to the substation.

"Ergon Energy is not aware of any commitment to a timeline being made to remove the existing 66kv supply to Mossman substation, to replace the existing 66kv substation with a 132kv substation.

"The initial project to supply Port Douglas independent of the Mossman substation at Cassowary, was driven by the significant infrastructure growth of Port Douglas in the late 1980s and early 1990s which exceeded the capacity of the Mossman substation and associated distribution feeders at the time.
 
"Since the Port Douglas and southern area load was transferred off the Mossman substation, the capacity of the Mossman substation and 66kv feeders has been adequate to supply the Mossman to Daintree area.

"This will remain the case for the foreseeable future. There are therefore no immediate plans to replace the existing supply arrangement. Growth in the demand for power in the Mossman to Daintree area has slowed substantially since the early 1990s."
 
Mr Bowes said replacing the existing substation would costs tens of millions of dollars, a cost which could not be justified.