Months of unexplained night-time power outages in Queensland's Isis district, around Childers, have left farmers, already struggling with high electricity and water prices, unable to reliably irrigate crops in the crucial summer period.

The outages have exclusively affected the irrigation pumps in the region's key agricultural sector causing them to shut down without warning, causing major crop and financial losses.

Widespread coverage of a power outage that caused the Brisbane Heat's Big Bash cricket match against the Sydney Thunder to be abandoned at Brisbane's Gabba last Thursday night prompted the growers to vent their frustration.

Farnsfield cane and peanut farmer Peter Russo said the region's growers have been left frustrated in the absence of a solution.

"The irony of this is there's a game of cricket on in Brisbane and, hang on, the growers here are in agriculture and who's looking after us?" he said.

"This is our livelihood, we've spent the money to get the crop to this position.

"We've spent a lot of money on chemicals and protection for our peanut crop especially. But not only that, our sugar crop, which is the biggest part of this district, this is when it's vitally important that it needs irrigation.

"We have the irrigation systems available, the water is there, and then the power cuts off."

Peanut and cane grower, Peter Russo, is frustrated that the power goes off at night, which has hampered irrigation. ( ABC Wide Bay: Nicole Hegarty )

Disrupting key growth period

A lack of rain has made irrigating even more important this year but the persistent outages have made it almost impossible to meet demand on the more cost effective tariff 65, which only runs at night.

Canegrowers Isis chairman Mark Mammino said growers have been doing their best to save money by choosing cheaper tariffs as power and water prices have continued to rise and sugar prices have fallen.

Isis Canegrowers chairman, Mark Mammino, says it's cheaper to irrigate at night, but frustrating when the power cuts out. ( ABC Wide Bay: Nicole Hegarty )

"This is going to severely financially impact a lot of the irrigators because they are already conscious of the fact that they probably can't afford their electricity bill but we're at a point where we can't afford not to irrigate," he said.

"Growers are being forced to complete irrigation during the day in the high cost window.

"Ergon are working to try and solve it but unfortunately to this time they haven't been successful."

Mr Russo has also been growing peanuts on his farm as a break crop and was about a month away from harvest when the situation worsened.

"This is when they need 50 to 60 millimetres of water a week; sugar cane is in the same boat," he said.

"If your irrigator switches off at 10 o'clock at night you've lost seven or eight hours of cheaper tariff."

'It's a fruit salad' with no pattern to outages

For Mr Russo the only way he has been able to tell if an outage has occurred is by the slight flicker of the TV or a light or by checking each pump.

"It's a fruit salad, I've got 12 electric motors running at the moment so I've got to go to every 12 because I don't know which ones have switched off," he said.

"I've got a pump that's 10 kilometres from my house so it's about an hour and a half round trip for me in the dark at 2:00am. It's not good for our health or for our stress levels."

Possible culprit

After months of work and previous false hope that the situation had been resolved, Ergon Energy believe they may have uncovered the problem.

Spokesman Ty Marega said a colony of bats that had been roosting on 66kv lines near the Childers Historical Complex have been causing the nightly outages.

"It appears we've finally had a Eureka moment," he said.

"The bats' wings have been making contact between the wires causing a momentary dip.

"It's forced irrigation pumps to stop operating because pumps have a greater sensitivity."

Mr Marega said Ergon was doing all it could to rectify the problem.

"It seems a well-intentioned local has been removing the bats' bodies before our crews can get in there to investigate," he said.

"To resolve that the crews in Childers have been working to extend the distance between wires to ensure bats' wings cannot make contact."

He said a community engagement team has been asked to contact affected irrigators.

Mr Russo said he was not aware of the bat situation but the time had well and truly passed for a solution.

"I would hope it's just some bats but I mean where's the issue going to go next, the bats are going to fly somewhere else and cause another problem," he said.

Peter Russo says it's difficult to know which pumps are affected when the power cuts out at night. ( ABC Wide Bay: Nicole Hegarty )

Focus on keeping crops alive until it rains

Mr Mammino had already planted and fertilised his crop and was now trying to irrigate to minimise further losses.

"I'm in the process of irrigating it as hard as I can to try and minimise any potential losses I'm having from the current sugar prices. Any increased cost in electricity that this causes is increasing that potential loss," he said.

Mr Russo said the whole district was losing.

"We'll have to start counting up the extra cost, the crop that we've lost because of the nights when we've had no power on and you take that over the district," he said.

"I see our neighbours out west they've got no water. Here we've got water we're keeping [crops] alive hoping that rain is around the corner."

Call for compensation

Canegrowers Isis has written to Ergon Energy and the Queensland Energy Minister to request compensation for the impacts of three months of power outages.

Acting Energy Minister Mark Furner said he had asked Ergon to contact affected farmers.

"I am naturally concerned with any stress that has been caused to the farmers," he said.

"I have asked that the local area manager look closely at the issue to see what can be done."