A dispute over a man's electricity led to a police officer doused in petrol and a chainsaw-wielding man being lit on fire in a bizarre incident in the city's north west.

Neighbours say employees of an energy provider turned up to a home in Riverstone, near Windsor, on Tuesday morning to tell the resident they would be cutting his power.

The resident - a 51-year-old man known to neighbours only as Bear - allegedly turned hostile, picking up a chainsaw and threatening to cut the power pole on the street outside his house.

Police say the man made a few cuts into the power pole outside his Regent Street home.