Power cuts on again for Kaitaia area

Kaitaia and surrounding areas will be without electricity for most of the day once again on Sunday, November 29 while Top Energy undertakes major maintenance work, including replacing a cracked concrete power pole at Umawera.

The outage, which is scheduled to start at 8am and end at 5pm, will replace the annual day-long maintenance outage planned for March next year. The company will be running newspaper advertisements in advance to advise what areas will be affected.

The damaged pole, south of Mangamuka, had moved as a result of the foundation failing, CEO Russell Shaw said. That had brought significant additional stress to bear on the pole, which had cracked and was in danger of collapsing.

If it fell it would cut all power to Kaitaia while emergency repairs were made. Bringing the day-long outage forward from March would enable the replacement to be combined with other essential work on the line, and limit the duration of the outage to a single day.

"We know that these scheduled maintenance outages are deeply frustrating and immensely inconvenient, and we try to limit them to once a year," Mr Shaw.

"It's worth emphasising that Kaitaia was due to have a day-long maintenance outage in March anyway. We have simply brought this forward to the end of November."

Kaitaia, he added, was linked to the national grid at Kaikohe by just one old and vulnerable high-voltage electricity line that Top Energy bought three years ago. Scheduled maintenance work requiring the line to be disconnected was essential if unplanned outages were to be combated effectively.

"This is an old transmission line," Mr Shaw said.

"We are doing everything we can to build a second line to reduce our reliance on this one, but land owner negotiations are taking significantly longer than we had hoped."

The pole was the second structure to have failed on the Kaikohe to Kaitaia high-voltage transmission line this year. In March Top Energy had to replace a tower in the Mangamukas.

Meanwhile engineers will replace 17 other structures along the length of the line this financial year without cutting power to Kaitaia. That work, along with the construction of a second high-voltage line up the east coast to Kaitaia, is part of a programme of network investment and replacement that Mr Shaw said had cost Top Energy $160 million since 2009, and would have an eventual price tag of more than $260 million by the time it was finished in 2026.

"Compare this to the network's total value of $140 million when the programme started and you'll understand how, essentially, we are in the process of building a whole new network," he said.

The second 110kV transmission line to Kaitaia was now not scheduled to reach the town until 2026 due to delays in negotiations with land owners. Mr Shaw acknowledged that that was a long wait for the town, and the company was investigating a range of short-term solutions, including back up diesel generation similar to that developed for Taipa.

"That will help keep the lights on in Kaitaia in the event of disruptions to the existing line from Kaikohe," he said.

And he urged that all electricity lines should be treated as live during any outage.

"Supply will be restored without warning, so it's important that people keep clear of the lines," he concluded.