Thousands affected by power outage in Tauranga area

A major power outage sparked queues of people waiting for their coffee fix at Papamoa Plaza today. Photo / file

A fault in the national grid cut power to thousands of people in Mount Maunganui and Pāpāmoa today.

About 22,000 people in Tauranga lost supply for about 30 minutes at 7.43am.

Network operations manager Phil Marsh said the fault affected Powerco's Ōmanu, Pāpāmoa, Matapihi, Te Maunga and Triton substations.

Powerco and Transpower worked together to restore power to all affected customers for about half an hour, he said.

Over at the Pāpāmoa Plaza, centre manager David Hill said the power cut caused a delay for people getting their morning coffee fix.

"At its worst, there would have been about 20 people lined up at Robert Harris, and maybe 15 people lined up at Double Teaspoon."

Hill said the power was only off for a couple of minutes and customers were more than happy to wait.

"Everyone's pretty relaxed about it all. It's a pretty collegial atmosphere when everyone's got the same first world problem of waiting for your coffee."

Eightyeight Cafe manager Sabrina Ramos said the Mount Maunganui store was minorly affected.

"It was off everywhere. . . Some people were checking on their houses and calling their family."

Everything was working normally after power returned, Ramos said.

A fault on the National Grid has cut power to about 9300 customers in and around Tauranga this morning. That issue has...

Posted by Powerco on Sunday, 28 October 2018