At 1015 am on Sunday, more than 12,000 residents in Broken Hill lost power without warning. Key points Some residents in New South Wales far west did not get power back online until 1030pm  Businesses say they were not prepared for the outage and have lost revenue TransGrid has suggested solar panels and a wind farm near Silverton contributed to the outage Residents in Silverton, Tibooburra, Wilcannia and Menindee were also cut off. Cafes and supermarkets were forced to close, miners were forced to surface, and many residents lost access to the 4G network as communication towers failed. Essential Energy warned the community late last week that Transgrid would be performing maintenance on the power grid, and that two 25-megawatt generators operated by Transgrid would be turned on during this time. In a statement at the time, an Essential Energy spokesperson said it did not anticipate any impact on power across the region. Left in the lurch Sundays are the busiest day for business owners Maryanne and David Trinder at their Broken Hill cafe Soull. After a couple of slow weekends, the pair were happy for the cafe to be packed with hungry customers. “We actually were full. We had a lot of breakfasts to come from the kitchen,” Ms Trinder said. “[But] we had to stop cooking immediately. We lost quite a lot of trade.” The Trinders have been managing the Astra for more than 20 years. Broken Hill Youssef Saudie The staff quickly worked to save as much stock as they could, stopping perishables from spoiling, before being sent home. “Once the power goes, how long do you stay open? When you have casual staff, you have to make adjustments accordingly,” Mr Trinder said. The outage has left the couple feeling frustrated, having affected the running of their business for the rest of the week. “It leaves you a bit deflated because you’ve still got all your overheads to cover, and all of sudden it’s taken a huge portion of your weekly income away,”  Ms Trinder said. It was a similar story for Demo Club chief executive Ward Gaiter, with power going out 15 minutes after doors first opened. “The initial reaction was frustration that it’s happened again, but we’re at that time of the season that we expect them to happen,” Mr Gaiter said. Staff at the Demo Club are still assessing the outage’s impact on stock levels.  Broken Hill Bill Ormonde He estimated the outage cost the Demo Club close to $35,000. “The biggest impact, besides lack of trade, was fresh food,” Mr Gaiter said. “We carry a significant amount of stock. That’s all in cool rooms and freezers and when they’re not working we have to salvage them.” Looking ahead Blackouts do occur from time to time in New South Wales’ far west, with some businesses considering having a fail-safe. For the Trinders, they hope power providers will consider the effect on business owners’ incomes. “I don’t know how Essential Energy can help business, with some offset for the costs, because utilities are quite high and to lose trade as well, there must be some way they can understand,” Mr Trinder said. “You’re losing a lot of trade and power bills are quite high as well.” Mr Gaiter said providers undertaking maintenance should have had the foresight to warn businesses of the possibility of an outage. “That’s the frustrating thing for me, that Transgrid and Essential Energy probably had a fair idea that something could’ve gone wrong,” he said. Transgrid blames renewable energy Transgrid executive network manager Marie Jordan spoke to Broken Hill on Monday and suggested the use of solar panels and the nearby Silverton Wind Farm could have caused the power outage. “One of the generators tripped and the signal was lost momentarily on the system, and we saw all the rooftop solar come on all at once, so we went from 2 megawatts up over 16 megawatts in an instant, so one generator, as hard as it worked to ramp that quickly, it just couldn’t do it, so the generator came offline,” Ms Jordan said. She said power suppliers would work alongside the wind farm to ensure it would be able to assist in future power outages. TransGrid suggested a wind farm and solar panels contributed to the power outage. Broken Hill Bill Ormonde “The Silverton Wind Farm and solar farm, their equipment does not allow them to generate when the main trunk line is out, so they’ll have to make investments in their system,” Ms Jordan said. She confirmed that Transgrid did not have any planned outages for the region in the foreseeable future. Essential Energy was contacted for comment. Broken Hill ” local news in your inbox Get our local newsletter, delivered free each Friday Your information is being handled in accordance with the Privacy Collection Statement . Email address Subscribe