The fallen pylon that cut power to nearly 100,000 properties.
Photo: Supplied / Kawakawa Electrical Ltd

Transpower says focusing on why a power pylon fell over, cutting power to thousands of Northland properties, is “speculation” and “extraordinarily unhelpful” while crews are still working to fully restore electricity.

Many Northland locals spent the night in the dark after the fallen pylon cut power to nearly 100,000 properties.

The last 60 homes still in blackout conditions in Paihia had their power restored – although in a limited way – just before 9.30am on Friday, after Top Energy installed a portable generator on Marsden Road.

Large industrial customers have shut down their operations so normal power use could be distributed around the network to get households, schools and other businesses online, Transpower said.

But full power will only be restored over the weekend, after a temporary tower is installed, it said.

Northlanders were being asked to continue conserving as much electricity as possible, particularly during peak times in the morning from 5am until 9am and 4pm until 10 pm.

While there should be hot water in cylinders overnight Transpower warned they would not be reheated until later in the day or after 10pm on Friday.

It warned the public to prepare for the possibility of more outages, particularly if power demands exceeded supply.

Transpower chief executive Alison Andrew told Morning Report the tower should not have fallen over and she apologised to those affected by the power cuts in Northland.

“We were doing some work on the tower yesterday, unfortunately the tower fell over. It’s a 220 kilovolt supply up to Northland, so a big supply line carrying two circuits … both circuits were taken out.

“We’ve spent yesterday afternoon, as fast as possible, restoring as much power through the smaller 110 circuit which also supplies the region.”

But she refused to comment further on what led to the pylon tower collapsing in the first place.

“It’s just extraordinarily unhelpful to focus and push that at the moment, given we want to focus all our resources on restoring power.

“[It’s] speculation, it’s very easy and interesting … [but it] doesn’t actually help get power back up right now, we need to focus the people in the field on restoring [power].

“We need to erect a temporary tower, lift one of the circuits from one side to the other, we need to keep our people on the ground, all our engineers, everyone, focused on this complicated job.”

Andrew said Transpower was not “covering up” anything and all would be revealed once a detailed investigation had been carried out.

Answers wanted

But the Energy Minister Simeon Brown, who was travelling to the site of the fallen pylon on Friday, said he would be asking engineers what caused the outage.

“It’s my expectation [that the] number one priority is to get power restored as quickly as possible and priority number two is to get answers.”

Whangārei Mayor Vince Cocurullo told Morning Report he would ‘love’ to get answers on the toppled tower.

“Transpower is where the fault seems to be and we’re still looking for an outcome and we’d love to hear one.”

Meanwhile, RNZ reporter Peter de Graaf, who is based in Kerikeri said there was a mix of frustration and a general weary resignation amongst locals about the power outages.

They “absolutely” wanted answers about the cuts, he said.

“You can imagine that’s the number one topic of conversation up here.”