It was a different story in the north. Top Energy's expansion and investment activity here was still mid-programme, and the results were clear to see. The network lost 75 per cent of supply from Kaitaia, compared with just 25 per cent from Kaikohe.
Not only did a greater proportion of people lose their power but it also took far longer to get them back online because the backbone of that part of the network was so badly damaged. It had to be repaired before Top Energy crews could turn their attention to the many faults and breakages on lower-voltage 'downstream' lines.
"No network, even the most modern, could expect to survive such an event unscathed," Mr Shaw said.
"The trick for any network faced with such severe weather is to minimise damage to its backbone, isolate problem areas without impacting large numbers of consumers, and then bring damaged parts of the network back with minimum delay.
"The good news for the other parts of the network that really did carry the brunt of the storm is that the improvements we're making enable it to bounce back well after atrocious weather, with real benefits for consumers.
"So we're on the right track, and we're well on our way to completing that work in the north."
Once completed, within the next 12 to 18 months, Kaitaia and northern reaches of the district could expect their electricity network to have similar resilience to Kaikohe's.
RingsKey to that resilience was the 'ring' concept.
"There's a pattern to the high voltage and feeder lines that Top Energy is building as part of its network expansion and investment programme. They form a series of rings across the region," Mr Shaw said.
"The concept is simple. If you cut a straight line it isolates the entire line from the break onwards. But if your line is a ring you can change power flows to ensure that as few people as possible are affected by the line break. It's this design that contributed significantly to the strength of the southern region's 33kV network during the storm."
Until recently the region's electricity network had consisted mostly of a series of straight lines. Good examples included the single 110kV high-voltage transmission line linking Kaitaia with Kaikohe and the rest of the country, and the single 33kV transmission line linking Taipa and the Karikari Peninsula with Kaitaia.
Now, the ring concept looked set to resolve that vulnerability. And Top Energy was building lots of them.
"The new 110kV high-voltage transmission line being built up the east coast is a great example," he added.
"When completed it will join with the existing single 110kV line supplying the entire region to form a massive ring, from Kaikohe to Wiroa, up the east coast past Kaeo and Taipa to Kaitaia and back to Kaikohe.
The network expansion and investment programme was also focusing on redundancy and protection. Substations were being built right across the district to reduce the number and duration of outages, as was a range of other back-up and protection infrastructure, which proved its worth during the storm when the southern 33kV network took a direct lightning strike but not a single property went offline.
The protection systems could pinpoint the location of a fault to a single pole or structure, speeding up the repair process and enabling Top Energy restore supply more quickly.
"Gutted as we were by the general impact of the storm, we were absolutely delighted by the strength and resilience of the parts of the network we have completed work on," Mr Shaw said.
Meanwhile the company was also now using more than 200 remotely-controlled switches and control devices on 11kV lower-voltage 'feeder' lines to help it identify more quickly exactly where a fault had occurred. They had enabled the company to break the network into smaller and smaller sections, so that when a fault occurred it only had to isolate small parts, and was able to bring other customers back online more quickly than in the past.
Be preparedMr Shaw's final point was a plea for property owners to keep trees clear of power lines - the bulk of outages during the storm were caused by trees falling on to lines - and to think about what they will need in the event of prolonged power outages in the future.
"These are much the same things as Civil Defence has been urging people to think about as preparation for natural disasters; people should ensure they have stocks of tinned food or things that don't need cooking, water supplies, batteries and a fully charged phone," he said.
"They should also think about how to connect their homes, businesses and farming operations to a generator. Last month we had cases of people hiring generators but then having no way to connect their properties to them.
"If you think you might need access to generator power talk now - today - to your electrician, so when the time comes to use your stand-by systems they do actually work."
He acknowledged, however, that the storm devastated much of the region's electricity supply for an unacceptably long period of time.
"We were truly gutted by the extent of the devastation," he added.
"At the height of the storm more than half of our customers were without power, but we do feel that the work we're doing to modernise the infrastructure has improved our ability to respond to devastating storms such as that one, and we look forward to completing that modernisation across the entire network before too much longer."
He also took the opportunity to thank two groups of people.
"Firstly, those of our customers who experienced extended outages for the incredible patience and understanding they showed while the storm was raging above us for almost a full week. And secondly our awesome staff. These were the people who were out in filthy weather to do what needed to be done to restore supplies across the region, or back in the office keeping customers up to date or preparing gear and materials to support the guys in the field. Many of these people then had to return to their own cold, dark homes to get as much shut-eye as they could before heading out to do it all again.
"To these two groups in particular, we'd like to say a big thank you."
