Date: Friday 30th October 2009
Subject: North Auckland and Northland Power Outage

Just before 8am this morning transmission lines belonging to Transpower (the national grid owner and operator) faulted, causing loss of supply to about 280,000 consumers in North Auckland and Northland. The fault occurred on the transmission lines crossing through Auckland.

Northpower was given the authority by Transpower to restore supply to customers just after 10am and within an hour we had power restored to all 53,000 connections in the Whangarei and Kaipara district.

Transpower did manage to get the area supplying the New Zealand Refinery restored within an hour of the fault.

This outage reinforces the recent Electricity Commission approval of an alternative transmission line through Auckland (North Auckland And Northland or NAAN project). This project, which is scheduled to be completed in 2013, would likely have avoided this kind of outage. The local support from industry and councils to join with us to push for this approval earlier this year is significant for our region.

ENDS

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