ACT electricity distributor Evoenergy says it is paying compensation to residents who suffered damage to their home appliances caused by a power surge. 

The incident occurred on January 20 and affected 83 customers over three streets in Canberra. 

The surge destroyed ovens, fridges, air conditioners, and other electrical appliances. Some residents are still waiting for their appliances to be replaced three months later.

Residents say that in some cases, their solar systems, heating, and fridges were all damaged, and they had to replace the items out of pocket and make a claim to Evoenergy. 

After the surge, residents were told where to find a claim form and began submitting them, but it took more than two months to hear anything from the electricity distributor. 

Evoenergy held a meeting on April 3 to explain that an investigation had been conducted, the problem had been identified, and claims would be paid out. ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr and ACT Attorney General Shane Rattenbury sent a letter urging Evoenergy to pay out all claims in full.

Evoenergy general manager Peter Billing has told ABC Radio Canberra that while he appreciates the delay was frustrating for affected customers, each step of the process had to be completed before claims could be approved. 

Late last week, Mr Billing said 70 per cent of the claims had been approved, and depreciation had not been to the value of household appliances in any of the currently approved claims. 

“The first major component in the delay was understanding exactly what the fault was and what we needed to do to that, and what impact did that have on the customers involved,” Mr Billing said. 

“Once we had that info processed, we then started communicating with customers.”

He explained that the surge was caused by the failure of a conductor component. 

“The outage was caused by a component on our distribution substation, which is the transformer that feeds the local area in Farrer,” he said. 

“There was a failure of a component on the neutral conductor. It's basically a bolted connection that holds two parts of the wires together.”