The Pilbara region’s annoying jigsaw of a power network is set to undergo a major overhaul, as Australia’s biggest mining hub continues to grow.

The Western Australian state government says it wants to dramatically increase the quality of the Pilbara’s electricity infrastructure, moving it on from decades of ad-hoc arrangements.

Western Australia sits outside the purview of Australia’s National Electricity Market, with its mineral-laden Pilbara region powered by the North West Interconnected System (NWIS).

The NWIS is owned and operated by a consortium of public and private companies including Horizon Power, ATCO Australia, Alinta Energy and BHP Billiton.

The power system was slapped together in the nineteen-seventies by various iron ore companies to generate and transmit supplies to their own operations.

The patchwork of disparate, stand alone systems was stitched together by the State Energy Commission of WA in 1985, but it has kept many of its initial problems.

WA energy minister Mike Nahan says the system suffers at fragmented interconnection points, it has a lack of standardization, a variety of different voltages and multiple transformation points.

This means that as a network, the NWIS struggles to deliver proper capacity in multiple parts of the system.

Nahan says the WA government is drawing up plans to remedy the shortcomings of the NWIS, fixing failures in both efficiency levels and energy security in the region.

“The Pilbara Energy Infrastructure Project will facilitate an interconnected electricity system with a governance model to facilitate efficient construction and use of infrastructure, and encourage further private sector investment,” Mr Nahan said.

“This is necessary to ensure a sustainable and efficient energy sector in the region, for the longer-term security of electricity supplies and development of the Pilbara region."

Lyndon Rowe, chairman of Western Australian state-owned power utility Synergy, has been picked to lead the Pilbara Energy Infrastructure Project, taking charge of a team that will include members of the public and private sector, senior representatives from the departments of State Development and Treasury as well as the Public Utilities Office, and senior executives from industry that have investments in the region.

Their first step is to write up a feasibility study for a new infrastructure model in the Pilbara.