Powercor crews will be conducting maintenance works between 8.45am to 4.30pm, with the power disruption expected to affect 380 customers.

Murtoa College principal Tony Goodwin said the electricity company had provided three months' notice to the school, allowing them to put alternate plans in place.

"We have a generator going, so we are running as normal. Our students had plenty of notification, so they have all relocated somewhere else in the town or somewhere out of town," he said.

"Powercor was brilliant, they gave us plenty of notification and when the issue came up of us wanting to stay open they provided a generator and connected it free-of-charge.

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"That was fantastic, they were brilliant."

Mr Goodwin said the school had a minimal on-site team and would not have issues with power usage.

"We are in remote learning so we only have skeleton staff here and 20 students," he said.

"It makes it a little bit easier, the generator isn't dealing with too much activity, it is generating at a reasonable rate.

"Not that I understand electricity very well, but I am led to believe from Powercor that we aren't using a lot of power."

Murtoa's Our Lady Help of Christians primary school decided to have a pupil-free day.

Principal Cathy Grace said the school closure aimed to take pressure off of parents having to make arrangements.

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"Powercor went around the various businesses and schools a while ago so we had actually already arranged for it to be a pupil-free day anyway. We were aware of it," she said.

"Today is a school closure for us, so even though the students are doing remote learning it is still classified as a school closure for us.

"It just eases a bit of pressure for our parents so we just kept it as a school closure day.

"I think it was great that Powercor notified us with plenty of time, they were very considerate, and it is for the benefit of the Murtoa community in the long run."

Essential services will continue, with Murtoa IGA open for business-as-usual.

A spokesperson for the store said Powercor had not cut electricity to the building.

The eight-hour power outage was considered necessary due to the type of powerline conductor used in the maintenance.

A Powercor spokesperson said the decision to cut power to Murtoa was reviewed to see if impacts to customers could be minimised.

"We understand many of our customers are working or studying from home and that there's never a good time for an outage, especially now," he said.

"Planned maintenance is an essential part of how we manage our network and allow our crews to safely maintain the electricity network so we can keep delivering reliable power to homes and businesses.

"By doing this planned work now, we are reducing the risk of unplanned blackouts in the future."

For more information on getting through a planned outage, visit Powercor's power outage factsheet.

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