Warning of winter black-outs

Power blackouts on winter afternoons will be needed if Transpower does not upgrade its electricity grid, a parliamentary committee has been told.

Transpower chairman David Gascoigne and chief executive Ralph Craven appeared before Parliament's commerce committee yesterday for the state-owned enterprise's financial review.

Dr Craven outlined Transpower's plans to build a 200km, 400kV transmission line connecting substations at Otahuhu and Whakamaru.

The line was needed by the winter of 2010 and would cost up to $500 million, he said. If it did not proceed, demand would need to be reduced through voluntary or forced outages at the peak time of between 5pm and 7pm in winter.

Up to 60 megawatts - about the peak load of a town such as Wanganui - would need to be shed and that would increase by a similar amount each year. As well, the frequency and duration of outages would increase.

"I don't want to be overly dramatic but that's the nature of the beast," Dr Craven said. "We're focusing on enhancing the core grid so that it can deliver for everyone in the country over the next 40 years or more."

Transpower had started consultation on the line, which had two proposed routes, and would announce its preference in June.

"Our ability to deliver in 2010 is going to be driven a lot by our success in terms of procuring property rights," Dr Craven said.

Work was being done on a standard easement agreement and that was expected to be ready within two months.

New Zealand First MP Brent Catchpole said most communities were "up in arms" about the high-tension wires appearing on their properties and accompanying restrictions on subdivision.

Mr Gascoigne accepted that and said it should be addressed when considering compensation.

"In other words, if Transpower, in order to provide something that is of national benefit, wants to take someone's private rights, then that's something that should be compensated for. The budgets that we do have [have] in them a global kind of sum to cater for compensation that ought to be paid for people whose rights are being interfered with in some way."

Transpower expected to pay for the upgrade from its own resources without having to get extra from the Government, he said.

Meanwhile Mr Craven put the cost of repairs to a damaged Cook Strait cable at up to $20 million. The cable, one of three high-voltage, direct-current cables on the sea floor, was damaged by a storm on October 5.

Mr Craven said it would cost $10 million to $20 million to replace about 100m of the cable and it was hoped work would finish by the end of March. "It is quite technically difficult and you need people that actually understand the business to do the work."

The three cables usually carried 1040 megawatts but that had been restricted to 886MW since October.

" ... with the market as it is currently running over the summer time, we're not near peak requirements on the system. So long as we get this back before the wintertime, we're not going to be inhibiting the market operation."

- NZPA

Power needs

Transpower plans to build the power lines, on pylons up to 70m high, from Whakamaru in south Waikato to Otahuhu in Auckland.

The $500 million line has drawn protests from many of the 1000 landowners whose properties it would cross.