It is still not known what caused 1152 homes and businesses in East Dubbo to lose power at 4.34pm on Saturday afternoon.

The area included the Orana Mall shopping centre, where the power went out, came back on briefly, and then went out again. The centre was forced to turn away customers.

Dan Murphy’s and the Macquarie Inn were also among the affected businesses.

Essential Energy Northern regional manager Mark Summers said protection equipment automatically activated to isolate the power supply after detecting a problem on the network.

He praised the speed with which crews responded to the incident.

“Our crews were immediately dispatched to patrol the section of the power network but were unable to find a fault or physical evidence of a problem,” Mr Summers said.

“Power was progressively restored to all customers by 6.37pm.”

It is possible that an unknown object temporarily contacted the electricity network, causing the unplanned outage, and then cleared itself.

In Coonamble, Warren, Gulargambone, Baradine and surrounding areas, 2,255 customers were affected by an unplanned power outage on Sunday morning.

A bird strike on the power network is believed to have caused the unplanned power outage.

“Network protection equipment activated at 7.21am after sensing a fault on the electricity network,” Mr Summers said, again praising the Essential Energy staff’s swift response.

“Crews worked as quickly as safety would allow to isolate sections of the electricity network before gradually restoring power supply to all affected customers between 8.41am and 8.59am.

“We apologise for any inconvenience and thank customers for their understanding as we worked to restore power.”

An additional 1900 customers in Cowra and Boroowa were without power from 10.30am until about 1pm on Sunday.