Get used to power cuts, Vector chairman says

Vector chairman Michael Stiassny. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Power cuts are a part of life and Aucklanders should get used to it, says Vector chairman Michael Stiassny.

Vector bosses spent much of yesterday's annual meeting in Auckland discussing the fire at a substation in Penrose on October 5 that cut power to 85,000 customers.

Mr Stiassny and Vector chief executive Simon McKenzie were unable to say what caused the fire until an investigation was completed, possibly early in the new year.

Only then, Mr McKenzie said, could the company discuss compensation for households and businesses, some of whom were without power for several days.

Compensation could take the form of the "Vector promise" of $50 for households and $200 for businesses. It would be premature to speculate on compensation above that, he said.

Affected businesses and homeowners have demanded compensation from whoever is responsible for the network failure. Paymark figures showed that the outages caused an estimated $4.3 million drop in spending on October 5, a busy Sunday trading day.

Coralie van Camp, a Vector shareholder and longtime critic of the power network company, told the meeting that people could have died due to poor maintenance at the substation.

She criticised Vector for paying out too much in dividends instead of investing in maintenance.

Mr Stiassny called it a serious incident that could have been worse, but said the company and electricity users could not afford a gold-plated network.

It would cost $500-$600 million for Vector to upgrade each of its 14 substations to achieve reliability above 100 per cent. State-owned Transpower, which provides bulk electricity to Auckland, would have to spend more, he said.

The company produced figures showing people in the affected areas had had 99.8 per cent reliability of power in the past 15 years.

But Mr Stiassny, whose home in St Heliers lost power during the outages, said power outages were a part of life and people should get used to it and plan for them.

The accountant said he had partial power from investing in a Vector solar panel and battery package.

He was able to run a small fridge, his son had a television to watch the NRL league final and the family had a barbecue, but he got told off by his wife for opening the freezer.

Mr McKenzie said Vector had a cable expert from the UK in Auckland looking at the site, taking damaged cables back to the UK for forensic analysis.

The company, he said, wanted to wrap up the investigation quickly.

Auckland's black Sunday

• Power goes out to swathes of Auckland on October 5.

• Outages due to fire at Penrose substation.

• Vector and Transpower investigating cause of fire.

• Vector accused of putting dividends ahead of maintenance.

• Vector says gold-plating network would cost billions of dollars.

• Chairman Michael Stiassny gets by with solar power during black-out.