"There's a sense that electricity and energy infrastructure is highly reliable - and that's true - but no one has really studied the resilience aspect of it, and there's no metrics around this, especially in very large disasters."
In the case of an Alpine Fault quake, the loss of connectivity from the Transpower lines coming from the east could largely cut power to the West Coast, with the exception of alternate lines coming in from the north.
"So the scenario we have co-created, just for a case study, is that it would be six to eight weeks before electricity could be connected back to the main grid.
"And if this highly improbable event does happen, how do you operate in that?"
Nair estimated electricity demand, from Nelson south to Franz Josef, could be around 50 megawatts at peak load.
Cut off, the primary source would likely be local hydropower, along with some diesel plants and distributed generation.
"It would involve using resources already there or specifically committed for this eventuality and trying to do some smart grid based load management.
"We also estimate that there would be some automation facilities that we could integrate into the system, which could be a cheap solution.
"But it also depends on what time a quake occurs, because, if the major source is hydro, there has to be enough of it in that instance - it also depends on how extreme the quake is, and whether the region is really liveable after that."
Nair hopes to come away from the study, funded through the Resilience national science challenge, with a blueprint that could be used in other areas here and overseas following a big disaster.