Power out? How to tell if it's the network or your house

Before working out whose problem it is, make sure nobody is in danger. Smoke, flames, sparking or a burning smell at the switchboard, or someone who has had a shock, all come ahead of any detective work. If there's smoke or fire, get everyone out.

Storm outages need extra care. Treat fallen powerlines as live, even when broken, and keep well clear of them and anything they're touching. Energy Safe Victoria says to contact your local electricity distribution company about fallen or unsafe powerlines; its faults number is on your bill.

Grab a torch rather than candles and start next door. At night, check the streetlights and the neighbours' windows. In daylight, listen for their air conditioner's outdoor unit, or ask over the fence.

Check a few houses, not just one. Homes on opposite sides of the road, or at either end of a long court, can sit on different parts of the network, so half the street can be dark and it is still a network fault. A lit house next door narrows things down, but it doesn't prove the problem is inside your walls.

A network outage is fixed by your electricity distributor, the company that runs the poles, wires and substations. That's a different business from the retailer that bills you, although the distributor's name and faults number are usually on the bill. An electrician can't restore a network outage, so calling one for a dark street only adds a visit.

In our part of Melbourne, the names you'll see include Powercor, Jemena and CitiPower. Powercor's Altona Terminal Station (West) supplies areas including Laverton, Altona Meadows, Point Cook, Hoppers Crossing, Werribee and Tarneit. Jemena's supply area reaches Williamstown and Footscray in the south and Brooklyn and Sydenham in the west, and CitiPower supplies parts of Port Melbourne. Network boundaries don't follow suburb lines, so go by your bill.

Check the distributor's outage information online before ringing; if your street is already listed, there's nothing to add. While you wait, Energy Safe Victoria recommends unplugging appliances at the power point to help prevent damage from a surge. Leave one light switched on so you know when supply is back, and keep the fridge and freezer shut.

If the neighbours have power and you don't, go to the board. Energy Safe Victoria's outage advice is to find the electricity box outside your home, check whether the safety switch has tripped, reset it if it has, and call a licensed electrician if it won't reset. In an apartment the board is often inside the unit instead.

You're looking, not fixing. Open the meter box door, but never remove the switchboard cover or anything held on with screws. Safety switches have a test button and '30mA' printed on them. The main switch is usually the largest and should be labelled. Look for anything sitting off or halfway.

Reset a tripped safety switch once, pushing it firmly to on. If it holds, note what was running when it went. If it drops straight back or won't stay up, leave it off. Trying again and again sends power back into whatever caused the trip, which is exactly what the switch is there to stop.

Older homes, like the post-war houses of Altona and Laverton, can still have ceramic fuses. WorkSafe Victoria lists ceramic fuses among its examples of asbestos-containing materials, and Energy Safe Victoria says electrical work isn't a DIY job, even small ones. Leave a blown fuse alone.

This is the one that catches people out. Neighbours lit, main switch on, nothing tripped, and not a light in the house. The fault then sits between the street and your main switch: the line from the pole or pit, the connection at the house, the meter, or the cables into the board.

Energy Safe Victoria calls the changeover from the network to your installation the point of supply. From there in, the property owner is responsible for maintenance and repair, including private lines on the property. Unsafe powerlines and damaged or leaning poles go to the distributor. Powercor lists a missing or loose service hook and a defective meter box as customer installation defects, which are the customer's to fix.

So ring the distributor first. If the fault is theirs, they fix it; if it's on your side, you need a licensed electrician. Don't go near the meter or the cables feeding the board. Energy Safe Victoria describes the wiring up to the switchboard, which can include the line from the street and the meter, as equipment where the electricity can't be switched off. Your main switch doesn't make it safe.

Not every outage is all or nothing. One switch down on the board with some rooms dark is a circuit in your home. Nothing tripped, but lights glowing dull or flickering, motors humming and straining, or rooms working at random, points to the supply itself, such as a damaged neutral or a lost phase.

For dull or flickering lights, a brownout, low voltage or partial supply, don't touch your switchboard or anything metal in the home. Turn off power points that are easy to reach, unplug appliances and contact your distributor. Switch the air conditioner off too; compressors don't cope well with low voltage.

Tingles from an appliance or a water tap are more serious than they feel. Stop using the tap or appliance, keep others away from it and have a licensed electrician check the wiring.

Once the network is ruled out or restored, the rest is ours: a safety switch that won't reset or keeps tripping, rooms still dead after the street comes back, a board that's all on with no power once the distributor has cleared their side, heat or a burning smell at the board, or an old fuse board. Renters should tell their rental provider too.

Our electricians start where the power stops. We test from the main switch outwards to find the circuit, connection or device at fault, tell you which side of the point of supply it's on, and make it safe. You get the price before we start, and if a new board is the sensible fix we'll explain why rather than patch around it.

If outages keep happening only at your place, note the dates, the weather and what was running. That record makes the first visit far more useful than a description from memory.