Top Energy Kaikohe substation repaired after major Far North outage

Top Energy teams have worked steadily to repair the damage at the Kaikohe substation after huge power outages.

Far North lines company Top Energy has reassured residents the equipment involved in one of several massive power outages has been repaired and is “back to normal”.

Top Energy chief executive Russell Shaw said the commissioning of the replacement switchboard panel at Kaikohe substation had been completed, and operating conditions were now back to normal.

Restoring resilience after the November 6 equipment failure, which left 23,000 households across the entire southern district without power for six hours, had been the company’s focus throughout the month, Shaw said.

“Our teams have worked steadily to repair the damage at Kaikohe and bring a replacement panel provided by Ngāwhā Generation Ltd into service.”

Shaw said the damaged equipment had been sent to the manufacturer for analysis.

The results will inform Top Energy’s full investigation and material provided to the Commerce Commission, he said.

“We understand these outages may have shaken the confidence of some in the community about the reliability of the electricity network, and we are very sorry about that.

“But I want to provide assurance that the network is reliable, and we have invested significantly in recent years.”

Four power outages from October 31 to November 8 cut power to thousands of households and businesses across a large chunk of the Far North, including Kaikohe, Kerikeri, Whangaroa, the Bay of Islands, and parts of southern Hokianga.

However, it was the scale of the November 6 outage that triggered a breach of the Commerce Commission’s reliability threshold.

The commission has confirmed an in-house engineer will investigate to provide information for the review.

When complete, “compliance action” will be determined, which could include anything from no action, to a warning letter, or court action with a fine of up to $5m.

Shaw said the company was also checking similar substations on the network.

“To add extra resilience, the intention is to put connection points for diesel generators at each of our zone substations over the next 12 to 18 months.

“If a similar major event occurred, these connections would allow us to deploy temporary diesel generation across the network in days, not weeks.”

Jenny Ling is a senior journalist at the Northern Advocate. She has a special interest in covering human interest stories, along with finance, roading, and social issues.