Farmers and regional communities in the Strathbogie are joining their neighbours in Euroa in urging AusNet to put more resources into improving infrastructure or even building a new microgrid system.
Alpaca farmer Clark Holloway, Strathbogie, has been organising locals in his town and farmers throughout the Strathbogie Ranges to come together and call on the provider to focus on reducing outages through that region.
"When we have an incident affecting 4300 houses [in this region] they will probably have it corrected in an hour in Euroa, but in Strathbogie, it's always 4-5 hours after it's corrected there," he said.
Mr Holloway himself has written and had direct discussions with AusNet representatives over the web to get answers on the frequency of his outages, but he believes better engagement is needed.
"I have also asked for a community engagement session at Strathbogie Hall here," he said.
"I think there's a growing feeling in our community that AusNet is beyond help, and that we possibly need to move to a Yakandandah-style microgrid for our area."
He said an informal group has been meeting to figure out solutions for farmers and residents living within the Strathbogie Ranges and he is hoping to find "strength in numbers".
"We've got a diesel generator, and this issue is costing us diesel, especially when it's something like 130 140 hours with power down since December. That's a lot of hours."
AusNet has previously apologised to the communities served by the line, including Strathbogie, for the number and duration of those power outages.
They said electricity reliability recently declined on their Benalla to Euroa feeder line, with a step change increase in the average duration and area (number of customers) impacted for each outage,
Some outages since November were initiated by extreme weather, but was influenced by the recent commissioning of new bushfire risk reduction technology called Rapid Earth Fault Current Limiters (REFCL) at Benalla and Violet Town.
While they are critical in reducing fire risk, they can make the network more sensitive to faults and it can take longer to restore them.
But Mr Holloway said that this excuse was a "neat Scooby Doo wrap up answer" and they were "simply pointed to the government's fault that they have to do this."
More than 1000 residents in the region petitioned AusNet to improve infrastructure after multiple outages since November, some lasting minutes to over 24 hours.
It comes as about 44,000 homes and businesses are still disconnected from electricity networks as of Thursday evening, which is down from 530,000 homes without power at the peak of storms that went through the state.
However Energy Minister Lily D'Ambrosio tweeted that AusNet will be facing complex repairs in and around the Dandenongs and through Gippsland.
The storm triggered one of largest power outages in Victorian history and could take weeks to fully fix for those living in the hardest hit area of Mirboo North.
Euroa MP Annabelle Cleeland has also recently held town halls in Euroa, Nagambie, Violet Town and Longwood, and has spoken to AusNet.
Ms Cleeland said the meetings were productive and left her with a cautious optimism, however acknowledged there was still a long road ahead.
She said she had been assured some solutions and infrastructure upgrades will be presented for the community.
"It remains to be seen if these solutions will make a tangible difference to the current system and its unreliability, however I was glad to hear that AusNet and their CEO David [Smales] seemed to take the matter and the concerns of our community seriously," she said.
"I also received assurances from the Energy Minister that she will be treating this matter extremely seriously and will help working towards a positive resolution for the region."
