Northland power outage: More electricity supply capacity restored for region

Transpower staff prepare to install a temporary Lindsay tower following the sudden collapse of a pylon south of Warkworth on Thursday last week. Photo / Transpower

Transpower has restored further electricity supply into Northland following the collapse of a pylon last week.

And fears the crucial work might necessitate another power cut on Sunday were allayed through the efforts of Northlanders, who conserved enough electricity for an outage to be avoided.

However, Transpower bosses warned there could still be outages, albeit short-lived ones, as full supply is yet to be restored.

Thousands in the region were left without power when a pylon holding Transpower’s two 220kV (kilovolt) transmission lines (circuits) into Northland toppled over on a farm near Glorit, south of Wellsford, about 11am on Thursday.

Power was largely restored that night as the company began increasing the load on its parallel 110kv network circuits from about noon that day.

Demand was reduced as consumers lowered their usage and businesses and major industrial users stayed shut.

Work began yesterday to transfer one of the 220kv lines from the fallen pylon onto a newly erected temporary Lindsay pole but had to be abandoned due to bad weather in the afternoon that caused dangerous working conditions. However, there was sufficient supply to meet the weekend’s lesser demand through the circuits already in place.

Today, Transpower successfully resumed and completed the reconfiguration work with the circuit re-livened shortly after 2pm.

Transpower chief executive Alison Andrew apologised to impacted areas for the disruption to supply.

“What happened was unacceptable and we apologise to all those that have been impacted by the outage caused by the fallen tower,” Andrew said.

“It is never easy to be without electricity and we know that Northland has been through a lot in recent years. We also know it’s a resilient part of New Zealand and we’d like to extend our thanks to local communities and leaders, Civil Defence and our lines company partners and local generators for their support and assistance.”

Transpower executive general manager grid delivery Mark Ryall said design engineers and service providers worked at incredible speed to get the work done ahead of demand ramping up again from Monday morning, which he said would have put pressure on the electricity supply that Transpower had re-routed through its 110 kV network.

“Our internal team and our service providers worked around the clock to design, and deliver the solution within significantly compressed timeframes,” Ryall said. “With electricity supply into Northland at reduced levels, it was critical we got this tower up and supply restored through our 220 kV network over the weekend.

He expressed his thanks to everyone working on the replacement tower along with local lines companies and local power generators for their assistance in managing the situation and getting to this point.

Ryall also thanked the landowner for access to the site and the local community for their support.

He noted that while transmission capacity had been restored, full security of supply would not be restored until the second 220 kV circuit was returned to service.

“Additional temporary structures need to be installed and the remaining circuit transferred to them. This circuit is under the fallen tower and the work is more complex than for the first circuit.

“We will be doing everything we can to get this completed as quickly as possible and hopefully before Friday.

“This means there is increased risk of short power cuts if faults happen to one of our three circuits currently supplying Northland but, depending on the cause, any disruption is likely to be short-lived.”

Meanwhile, the cause of the pylon collapsing remained a mystery.

Andrew said that there has rightfully been a lot of interest in what caused the tower to fall and that Transpower would turn its full attention to that now that supply into Northland has been restored.

“Something has gone terribly wrong for a tower to fall over, and we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” she said.

Transpower installed a temporary Lindsay pole this weekend to hold one of the 220kV circuit lines that was downed where a pylon fell over last week, south of Wellsford. Photo / Transpower

“From the beginning, we have been committed to doing a thorough investigation once power is restored. We have appointed an external party to lead that work and we will announce more details of that in coming days.

“But as we have said all along, it was unhelpful to speculate on the cause while we were focused on restoring electricity supply as quickly as possible for the people of Northland. That had to be our priority.”

The Electricity Authority announced Friday that it was also conducting a review after being instructed by the Minister for Energy Simeon Brown.

Earlier that day, the minister visited Northland to see the collapsed pylon and meet with mayors and emergency operators, sharing his concern for Northlanders.

“It is unacceptable what happened yesterday; it just should not happen,” Brown said.

He was also considering a Government review.

Andrew said Transpower welcomed the review and would work closely with the authority to ensure everyone understood what happened and to prevent it happening again.

Meanwhile, power subscribers have left messages on Transpower’s Facebook page asking the company to instruct the power providers it supplies to give consumers a credit in acknowledgement of the outage.