Downed Northland pylon: Leaders say Transpower owes Northlanders a ‘serious goodwill payment’

Transpower owes Northlanders a “serious goodwill payment” after a report showed a pylon collapse that left 88,000 people in the region without power earlier this year was “clearly not an act of God but an act of incompetence and negligence”, Northland MP Grant McCallum says.

The Advocate asked McCallum, Northchamber CEO Darryn Fisher, and Whangārei Mayor Vince Cocurullo their reaction to the Electrical Authority investigation findings released yesterday about the toppled pylon on a farm near Glorit, south of Wellsford, on June 20.

The leaders agreed it was now important for the grid owner Transpower to make amends. They hoped it would come in the form of a seven-figure compensation payment that could be used to benefit all of Northland and was still being negotiated with the company.

McCallum applauded the report for its finding that Transpower itself was also at fault for the incident, which was estimated to have cost the region anywhere between $37.5 million and $80m.

In its earlier investigation, Transpower blamed its contractor Omexom’s crew who’d been working on the pylon during which an inexperienced and unsupervised worker removed all the nuts from three of the tower’s four legs against Omexom’s standard practice. While the report reiterated that finding, it also identified numerous issues with Transpower’s processes, including monitoring.

Delivering the report after an investigation led by lawyer Sarah Sinclair, Energy Minister Simeon Brown said: “These are incredibly concerning findings, and the report identifies a number of recommendations that I expect Transpower will fully accept and act with urgency to address.”

McCallum noted the report finding that those failings were made all the worse because the company had been alerted to them by one of its engineers in 2021 but disregarded them.

Energy Minister Simeon Brown says Transpower failed to act on prior warnings, seen here with investigation lead Sarah Sinclair. Photo / Mark Mitchell

“Whilst it won’t directly compensate everybody if we can get a seven-figure sum we can use it to promote and benefit Northland as a whole,” McCallum said. How the fund would ultimately be used would be a decision for community leaders – mayors, iwi, and others.

“My sense is that ultimately individual businesses will have I’m sure, gone to their insurance companies or looked at their own legal options if that’s what they want to do, but in many cases the amount that they lost was less than their excesses and so forth.

“Every individual business is welcome to pursue its own ends I see this [compensation] as a goodwill payment to acknowledge the hurt to Northland,” McCallum said.

The report also highlighted and acknowledged the importance of power generation within the region, he said.

If Northland had not had the Ngāwhā geothermal power plan, the losses would have been considerably higher, McCallum said.

“And it’s great to see the minister [Simeon Brown] focusing in on that [particular report finding] and looking to allow local lines companies to get involved in generation.

Northland MP Grant McCallum is not happy after a pylon came down cutting power in Northland.

He pointed to proposals from Northpower and Top Energy recently tabled at a regional economic development summit for another 600 megawatts of energy to be generated within five years.

Fisher said he’d had a mixed reaction to the report but was pleased that it “told us what we thought we knew – that there were systemic issues from [Transpower’s] board all the way through [the company]”.

“If someone told a Transpower employee that it was important to paint a rainbow on a road, I think it would have happened but if someone said, look this is unsafe that we need to review how our contractors operate and maintain our equipment, you can see it gets overlooked.

“I think there’s a real cultural problem within the organisation and throughout SOEs in New Zealand.

“That’s a real issue and I’m just glad that the minister has identified that and is looking to rectify those things not only in this SOE but also within things like KiwiRail and other SOEs as well.

“This report strengthens our request for compensation and I note that while it wasn’t a recommendation, the outcome is such [that] there is the opportunity for an independent panel to essentially guide Transpower to make that compensation claim back to the people of Northland and the businesses of Northland.

Transpower staff prepare to install a temporary tower for part transfer of the electricity supply into Northland following the collapse of the pylon near Glorit. Photo / Transpower

“I really hope that happens,” Fisher said.

He also applauded work being done by Northpower and Top Energy towards making the region more resilient.

“It’s a really important piece of infrastructure.”

He believed one key thing missing from the report were specifics around changes to legislation that would enable New Zealanders to raise a class action against “an entity with such incompetence as this”. It was currently too cost-prohibitive here yet reasonably possible in other places globally.

While that was missing as a specific outcome of the report, Fisher said the business community would continue to advocate for it.

Cocurullo said he was pleased the Energy Minister had highlighted the report’s findings that this incident wasn’t an isolated one.

“No one just does things just for the hell of it, it’s generally because they’ve got away with it.

“My concern is that I don’t want it to happen again – I don’t want Northland to be left out in the cold again.

“That’s why we’ve been working on an energy strategy for Northland.”

However, that strategy was ultimately reliant on a $300 million investment by Transpower to upgrade the region’s lines to carry the additional power.

“That’s why we’re working closely with Transpower – to try to find a really good solution for Northland,” Cocurullo said.

Meanwhile, managing director of Omexom New Zealand Mornez Green apologised for its part in the power outage.

“As a result of the incident, Omexom immediately undertook its own organisation-wide review and has introduced a range of changes to prevent recurrence of any similar event.

“It is essential that this event, rare as it was, is never repeated,” Green said.

Transpower executive general manager Grid Delivery Mark Ryall also apologised to everyone that was impacted and said the company accepted the report’s recommendations, which were “generally in line” with those made in Transpower’s report.

“We are committed to doing whatever we can to ensure an event like this never happens again and to improving regional resilience,” he said.

Sarah Curtis is a news reporter for the Northern Advocate, focusing on a wide range of issues. She has nearly 20 years’ experience in journalism, much of which she spent court reporting. She is passionate about covering stories that make a difference.