A PLANNED power outage has seen the majority of the main street in the Brewarrina township without power for most of today (Wednesday 16 March).

22 Essential Energy customers were impacted by the blackout and while some were able to stay open, others elected to shut up shop for the day.

According to the Manager of the Brewarrina Aboriginal Cultural Museum Amy Gordon, while they were not affected, most businesses along the main street had their power turned off including the local chemist, a supermarket, a couple of pubs and Local Aboriginal Lands Council.

The local Brewarrina Shire Council Offices and Visitor Information Centre were affected and were closed for the day.

While the outage was planned in advance, Ms Gordon said it seemed to come without a lot of warning for locals.

"I personally didn't know about it until yesterday when I saw a sign in the supermarket - I was pretty surprised, however when I asked around others seemed to be aware of it," she said.

"I do think the communication could have been better - it sort of reminded me of an outage we had late last year where we got a letter but the times of the outage didn't actually match up."

While she felt lucky not to have been affected by today's outage, Ms Gordon said she was saddened to see businesses she deemed a necessity like the pharmacy impacted.

However, pharmacy owner Simon Shehata said the people carrying out the works had actually catered for them to stay open during the day.

"They actually offered us a generator to keep the main stuff going, like the computers and the tills," Mr Shehata said.

"We couldn't use all the lights and power outlets but it was great to have it before the power came back in the afternoon. I was expecting today to be a lot harder but it was actually very smooth."

While the Essential Energy Power Outages website said the outage was for 'general network maintenance', a company spokesperson explained it was for work being carried out by an authorised contractor on behalf of another customer and was scheduled between 8am and 3pm.

Further investigations revealed the outage was actually to allow for the installation of new electric vehicle chargers in the main street car park.

The chargers are among several which have been installed in regional towns across the state as part of a program jointly funded by the state government and NRMA in an effort to expand the state's regional EV charging network.

Brewarrina Shire Council Mayor Vivian Slack-Smith - who works for the local Ochre Health facility which was also affected - said the outage could have been planned better, however she was glad to see the chargers come to town.

"Council did put in a complaint because of the potential impact on businesses - however they only got it on Friday and by then it was too late to change because they had everyone organised," Mayor Slack-Smith said.

"Unfortunately the grocery shop couldn't trade at all today, so it was a pretty profound impact in the middle of the week.

"I do think it could have been maybe done on the weekend when it would have had a smaller impact, however it did have to happen and I suppose there are worse things which could have gone wrong. Plus, it fortunately didn't impact too much of the town's residential area."

According to Mayor Slack-Smith, NRMA did put two crews on the job to try and complete it as quickly as possible to minimise disruption and the power did end up come back on earlier than anticipated.