ERGON Energy has admitted it took up to two hours for controllers in Rockhampton to give the go-ahead for powerline repairs after Saturday's storm and outages.

Nearly 5000 households north of Warwick lost power from early afternoon when power poles and lines came down, with some customers not back on until shortly before 9pm.

The first outages happened up to half an hour before the worst of the westerly winds struck.

An Ergon spokesman yesterday said outages - whether planned or unplanned - were responded to "through a world-class operations centre" in Rockhampton.

"Utilising the latest technologies it is more efficient to centralise such facilities with agreed decision-making processes involving people locally and in the control centre," he said.

"Local crews still need to patrol specific areas to locate causes but time taken now for response is generally more efficient than in the past.

"Saturday's storm and winds did stretch our resources, particularly being on a weekend, and extra resources had to be organised."

The delay in repairs follows a similar episode on the evening of August 30 where several hours passed before readied local crews were authorised to head into the field.

Ergon at that time blamed a "communications issue" related to safety.

The spokesman said on Saturday a power pole on East St near the Caltex carrying 11,000 and 33,000-volt lines came down, on the Warwick-Killarney Rd a branch fell on an 11,000-volt line and in the Sandy Creek-Pratten area a circuit-breaker tripped, "probably caused by wind".