Cable joint identified as cause of power blackout

The cause of a power cut that left 800 Manukau City properties without electricity over the weekend is expected to be fixed by tonight, lines company Vector said today.

The 800 customers in Dannemora have been on generator power since they were reconnected yesterday after a 12 to 14-hour blackout that began about 10.30pm on Saturday.

Vector spokeswoman Charlene White said the cause was traced late last night to an underground cable joint near two transformers originally thought to have been the problem.

"We are on site this morning digging up the cable," she said.

"We will repair it today and hopefully we should have everyone back on to the network by tonight."

Ms White said the power cut was not related to other blackouts in the area in recent weeks.

She said Vector wrote to residents last week to say that extra crew were being called in to check equipment.

"We acknowledge that there has been a couple of outages there in the last couple of months," she said.

"We are going through the network in the area to concentrate on checking the equipment to make sure everything is doing what it should."

- NZPA