HB lines going to ground

LAWRENCE GULLERY
Powerlines company Unison is working on a plan to have its Hawke's Bay network cabled underground by 2019.
The company is in year two of a 15-year plan to lay its 5490km distribution system underground.
Unison's chief executive, Ken Sutherland, gave the Hawke's Bay Power Consumers' Trust an update on the project at its annual report last week.
He told the trust Unison spent $4 million on the project last year and this year would spend about $1.5 million to continue laying the network underground.
About 43 percent of Unison's Hawke's Bay network had already been shifted underground, mostly in urban areas.
New subdivisions were automatically set up with underground lines.
Mr Sutherland said while it was about four or five times more expensive to underground the network compared with replacing the overhead system, the benefits outweighed the extra costs. An underground network increased power delivery efficiency and reduced faults. It was also safer to the environment when considering natural disasters and vehicle accidents which had traditionally damaged overhead lines.
"There also is the issue of visual amenity. People don't want powerlines overhead in their sections," he said.
Unison had worked with the Hastings District and Napier City councils, and Telecom to reduce costs and make the project viable. Streets with power poles coming to the end of their "economic life" were areas Unison targeted to put lines underground.
"We do run into some problems where the council is working on a street but the power poles there are only half way through their life, so we can't justify it," Mr Sutherland said.
Laying the lines underground gave Telecom a chance to also lay its communication cables.
"We try to encourage them (Telecom) to come on board at the same time because its cheaper, but in some cases we have had to cover costs."
Hastings District Council roading manager Rob Bramley said the council was trying to work with Telecom and Unison but sometimes it was difficult to co-ordinate all three groups.
"We have some streets where there is just Telecom cabling and others where there is power cabling," he said. The council's 10-year plan for maintaining underground assets gave Unison and Telecom a chance to see where and when work on roads in the district would begin.
"We need to have a road where the asset is at the end of its life but Unison may have already come in a couple of years prior and installed new power poles (which would stand) for the next 40 years," he said.
Napier City Council's road asset manager, Jon Schwass, said Telecom and Unison had used the council's road reconstruction plan to decide where they could both work on underground services.
He said Bowling Road in Taradale, which was on the council's Taradale roads upgrade programme, had already been prepared by Telecom and Unison for underground cabling this year.
"Last year they also worked on Mission Road. They set up all of their underground cabling before we went in and worked on the road," Mr Schwass said.