Powerco supports Te Puke schools with laptop donations

Thirty repurposed laptops have been donated to Te Puke High School by Powerco.

Local electricity lines company Powerco is donating laptops to Te Puke High School for the school’s rangatahi [young people] to use.

Following the recent rollout of new laptops at Powerco, many of the old laptops were found to be in good working condition, prompting the decision to give them a second life in classrooms across the company’s network footprint.

Around 500 laptops are being donated across the North Island, including 30 to Te Puke High School and another 15 to Te Puke Intermediate School that were delivered last week.

Powerco general manager of customers Stuart Dickson says Powerco regularly updates its computers, with its IT services team cleaning and preparing the laptops so they’re ready for the students to use.

“As a company, Powerco believes in supporting and giving back to the communities in which we operate. Donating the laptops is also a sustainable way of extending the life of the technology,” he says.

Te Puke High School principal Alan Liddle says he thanks Powerco for its generous support of the school.

“Our students really appreciate receiving extra computers to be used in our school,” he says. “Also, thank you to Joe Anderson for his efforts in securing this support and Armand de Villiers and Ben Durham, our IT specialists, for getting the laptops ready for our students to use.”

Powerco is New Zealand’s second-largest electricity and gas distribution utility, with over 900,000 customers (across 473,000 connections) connected to its networks. Powerco’s electricity networks are in the western Bay of Plenty, Thames-Coromandel, eastern and southern Waikato, Taranaki, Whanganui, Rangitīkei, Manawatū and Wairarapa.

Its gas pipeline networks are in Taranaki, Hutt Valley, Porirua, Wellington, Horowhenua, Manawatū and Hawke’s Bay.

Powerco won Energy Distributor of the Year at the 2024 Energy Excellence Awards.