Transpower crews prepare to install a temporary tower on a farm in Northland.
Photo: Transpower

Transpower is erecting a temporary tower and says it is on track to deliver more power to Northland by Saturday evening.

Thousands of people had their power cut on Thursday after a pylon fell over.

It was largely restored on Friday, but households and businesses were asked to keep conserving power, with repairs taking place over the weekend.

Transpower crews work at dawn, preparing to install a temporary tower after a fallen pylon cut power to thousands of Northland properties.
Photo: Transpower

Posting on its Facebook page on Saturday, Transpower said its crews planned to move one of the lines from the fallen tower across to the temporary tower.

“Our crews have been working hard to get additional power through the Northland.”

A Transpower spokesperson said it was aiming to have the temporary pylon running by Saturday afternoon, but the process was “complex and challenging”.

Both the local power companies – Top Energy and Transpower – said they managed to get through Friday night thanks to households conserving power and hot water.

Transpower says a pylon falling over is the cause of the outage.
Photo: Supplied / Kawakawa Electrical Ltd

A Northpower spokesperson said customers had been “fantastic” and Saturday morning’s peak had been easier due to it being the weekend.

Northpower customer and community general manager Rachel Wansbone said there had been no issues overnight or on Saturday morning.

“The network is stable and we’ve been able to keep things running as normal. We have asked the public to conserve energy and they’ve done a great job at that.

“It has meant that we have had no outages overnight and that’s kept everyone in supply.”

Wansbone said Channel Infrastructure’s Marsden Point fuel refinery was back online but other industrial plants such as Golden Bay Cement and Fonterra remained closed for now.

A Top Energy spokesperson said hot water had been restored by 10pm on Friday night and “no one should have had a cold shower this [on Saturday] morning”.