Contractors worked over the weekend to install a temporary pylon in Northland.
Photo: Transpower

Northland’s electricity supply is back at full capacity, although the network is still in a fragile state.

Thousands of households lost power on Thursday after a tower fell near Glorit.

Transpower has reconnected one of the region’s two 220-kilovolt circuits, propping it up with a temporary pylon. The other line remains trapped under a fallen tower.

As a result, the risk of short power cuts was higher than usual, a Transpower spokesperson said.

Morning Report approached Transpower for an interview but no one was available.

However, local lines company Northpower chief executive Andrew McLeod told Morning Report supply was “business as usual”, they had “all the energy we need”, and local networks were back to normal.

Because the electricity was being transmitted through a single circuit, there was a higher risk of outages than normal, but each circuit could provide the load the region needed and it was “unlikely” there would be further power cuts this week, he said.

“I think for people at home and businesses, we will just get on with it and assume that Transpower will finish the work on time.”

Repairs to the other line were likely to be completed before next week, he said, and it was “not abnormal” to rely on a single line, particularly for regions “out on a spur” like Northland.

“That’s a big, modern line. Pylons falling over [is] pretty unusual, but while the pylons are standing that’s a very certifiable line for Northland. That’s a fairly normal configuration … and it can give us a fair amount of energy when we need it.”

McLeod would not be drawn on speculation that Transpower contractors had removed bolts from the pylon before it fell on Thursday, except to say that Northpower had helped with some of the repair work afterwards.

“Our focus has been on the repair. Clearly, we’ve asked them what’s happened, what they’ll be doing about it.

“Their message has been same to us… they’ll want to investigate [the fallen pylon], they’ll want to understand it… [to ensure it] doesn’t occur again. That’s fine with us. We really do want to understand what’s happened and make sure we can rely on the Transpower service into the future.”

McLeod thanked households and businesses that had been affected by the power outages.

“It was an unusual situation. We had a lot of our large industrial companies down … and the local communities had a fair amount of disruption … they’ve had to manage energy through the evening and through the morning. They’ve been phenomenal at that.

“We realise it’s just a big disruption, they just want to get on with their lives and know that power’s reliable. They don’t want to have to muck around too much … just a big thank you for our community.”