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Far west New South Wales has been reconnected to the power grid more than two weeks after being cut off.
The region from central NSW to near the Queensland border was on generators before there was a brief blackout to get the network back on Thursday night.
An outage of about 25 minutes was all it took.
Sooner than expected
Essential Energy operations manager Mark Summers said Transgrid made the call on Thursday afternoon.
"Transgrid let us know they were ready to recommission the 220 KV transmission network into Broken Hill so we very quickly had our crews on the ground ready to go," he said.
The move came a day early.
Transgrid's head of Far West Operations, Sam Pickering, said earlier thie week the grid would be reconnected on Saturday, which was five days earlier than previously expected.
Sam Pickering speaks with reporters ahead of electricity being returned to Broken Hill. (ABC Broken Hill: Coquohalla Connor)
It came after a storm cell tore down seven power poles south of Broken Hill on October 16.
The Bureau of Meteorology said in a statement that it believed a mini tornado was to blame.
"The damage to infrastructure that occurred south of Broken Hill is consistent with such damaging winds, and the possible presence of a tornado," a statement from the bureau read.
The communities of Menindee, Wilcannia, Silverton, Broken Hill and Tibooburra were left without power.
A generator was used to power the region but last Monday the generator faulted, leaving more than 10,000 people without power for up to 36 hours.
Transgrid has since issued a formal apology to the community regarding the impact of the outages.
Remote communities did not receive generators until 48 hours after the storm. (ABC Broken Hill: Coquohalla Connor)
Mr Summers said the four generators that were trucked in after the fault would remain in the region.
"We'll make sure we don't leave the community without some sort of redundancy," he said.
Moving forward
The federal government on Thursday announced that affected workers would be eligible for up to 13 weeks of income support.
Transgrid is providing $500,000 in grant money to community organisations and not for profit groups in the far west.
The state government announced last week it would enable payments of $200 to electricity account holders and $400 for small to medium businesses.
But the system to access the support has not yet been created by Service NSW.
Chris Minns announces a payment of $200 to all eligible residents. (ABC News: Bill Ormonde)
A further support payment of $200 for all impacted residents over the age of 18 was announced on Friday.
The Australian Energy Regulator and the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal are investigating power provider Transgrid over the blackout.