Businesses irate over costly Mount power cuts

By Natalie Bridges
An unexplained series of power cuts over the past month are costing several Mount Maunganui businesses both customers and profits.
Three neighbouring businesses, Bin Inn Bulk Food Market, Kwangchow Restaurant and Col's Butchery and Delicatessen, have been experiencing hour-long power cuts that TrustPower has so far been unable to solve.
Trevor Craig, owner of Bin Inn, said he has lost "significant" amounts of money.
"We're losing custom and it's very costly. It would be a significant amount of money because we have had people coming in and walking out again."
Last week all three experienced three faults in three days - two lasted one hour and the other half an hour.
Mr Craig had no Eftpos or scales to weigh his produce during that time, which made it impossible to function.
"I've been next door to weigh things but it's a nuisance. It seems amazing that it's taking five power cuts in a month and the problem still hasn't been sorted."
The neighbouring businesses have attempted to pull together to keep each other afloat.
Col Drever, who owns Col's Butchery, set up some electronic scales for Mr Craig to use during the power outages, which meant Mr Craig was dashing next door every time he had a customer.
Similarly fed up with the repeat power problems, Mr Drever said the day-to-day running of his business has been stressful.
"It's just a nuisance, a real pain. Every time the power goes off we have to keep all the fridge doors shut and we can't use half of the machines. I have to re-programme the smokehouse for the ham and instead of hams coming out at 5pm they come out at 7pm."
Kwangchow Restaurant owner Helen Lim was forced to throw away some food during last Friday's power cut and lost some customers because the air conditioning wouldn't work. "The air con is off and the fridge and the freezer is off and we have got the smorgasbord unit half off. We are still running the business because we have half on and half off. But some of the vegetables on the smorgasbord - we had to throw them away. It was too hot when the power cut and customers weren't happy about that and we lost some customers, too."
The power cuts relate to one of three faulty phases that supply the area. Only Bin Inn relies solely on the faulty phase.
TrustPower community relations manager Graeme Purches said each power cut has been attended to but the problem kept recurring.
"The fuse has been replaced and then it blows again and it's about determining why that's happening. Something connected to that supply has changed since December."
The root of the problem still has not been identified, but yesterday lines company Powerco was trying to temporarily move the businesses attached to the faulty phase on to another, said Mr Purches. "There is one particular phase coming from that transformer that the local load is increasing to the point where it blows the fuse. Someone in the area has installed new equipment or someone in the area has a faulty piece of equipment."