Initially power was not meant to be restored to the 27,000 affected North East residents until 1.30pm to 3pm. But an AusNet spokesperson said all customers were back online by 10.15am as ground crews were able to safely energise a second line to restore power while crews patroled the first line to locate faults.

The spokeswoman said AusNet believed a network fault likely caused the outage on the first line and apologised for the inconvenience.

In anticipation of the long outage many business had already shut up shop, while Albury Wodonga Health had suspended non-urgent elective and dental surgery at Wodonga Hospital.

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Some Wodonga schools had contacted parents to collect children or cancelled online meetings.

When the power went out Water Tower Shoe Repairs co-owners Justin and Lauren Turton had to close and travelled back to their home in Albury so they could feed their baby.

Despite power returning, the pair decided not to cross the border and return to the business, which has already reduced its hours after being hit hard by COVID and the border closure.

"We've been getting Job Keeper but even so we've lost quite a bit of money," she said.

"Winter is our busiest time of the year, normally we'd be doing overtime just to keep up but we haven't had to do overtime at all, some days we have nothing much..."