Network update as at 6:15pm on Thursday, 16 February
16 February 2023
The team have had another busy clearing known faults and dealing with new faults caused by delayed effects from the cyclone.
Field crews restored around 600 customers at Mōkau who were without power due to one of those new faults. And the team made great progress with the generator switch at Tūrangi. The original generator connected at Tokaanu is now at Tauranga-Taupō supplying those customers who have been without power for three days now. The new generator at Tokaanu is humming away supplying power to the village there.
The team have also fixed a fault on the Whakamaru feeder, reconnecting rural customers who have been without supply for days. These mainly farming customers have been super resilient, modifying farming practices and looking after their animals’ welfare needs. We greatly appreciate your patience and understanding over the week that’s been.
Tonight, from 9pm anyone currently without power will remain disconnected overnight. We appreciate how frustrating this is for everyone affected and truly wish it could be avoided, however, the extreme nature of the event simply isn’t allowing that to happen.
Over the coming days and weeks there are likely to be a number of short notice outages in the northern and southern areas of our network as we work to further stabilise the network. We’ll provide further information on those as they come to hand. We also expect there may be some other unplanned outages as part of the network that have been damaged by the cyclone become evident.
Our hard-working crews will be back on deck first thing tomorrow, working safely to continue reconnecting as many of those without power as possible. A skeleton crew will remain on hand overnight to attend to any emergencies.
Please keep you and your whānau safe by:
• keeping yourself and any children at least 10m from downed lines
• treating lines as live at all times
• activating your emergency response plan if you are medically dependent on electricity
• following the advice of your local Council and/or Civil Defence team
• dialling 111 if you have an emergency
Kia kaha everyone, take care and stay safe!