Essential Energy regional manager northern Ben Williams said the power network switched itself off after it sensed a problem.

Dubbo customers were the first affected, with 6241 premises losing power about 5.14pm, he said.

Eight minutes later, power was cut to a further 2391 households and businesses in Geurie and Wellington.

"Within 10 minutes of the interruption occurring in parts of Dubbo residents would have seen power come on and go off again as we attempted to restore power," Mr Williams said.

"Once the affected area of the network was identified our crews commenced rerouting the network around the problem area and commenced progressively restoring power to those affected."

He said the Geurie and Wellington customers had their power restored by 5.47pm then 457 in Dubbo at 5.48pm, a further 2,861 at 6.33pm, 580 at 6.34pm, 1,283 at 6.35pm, 995 at6.38pm and the remaining 65 at 6.41pm.

The power went off again in Dubbo about 9.26pm while Essential Energy repaired damage to the network which had been caused by the original interruption, Mr Williams said.

A map posted on Essential Energy's website on Sunday afternoon showed the extent of the widespread outages while residents took to social media to report where they were and when their power went out.

Some residents reported abnormally large queues at fast food drive-through lanes, presumably as residents feared the power outage would mean they were not able to cook their dinner.

"While power was restored to all customers quickly, the problem has caused quite a bit of damage to the 

network," Mr Williams said.

He said Essential Energy crews would make further repairs to the damaged bypassed sections of the power network.

"I thank customers for their understanding as we worked as quickly and safely as possible to restore 

power," Mr Williams said.