KEY POINTS:
A fault has closed the 400 megawatt Otahuhu B gas-fired power station and is expected to take at least four days to fix.
National Party energy spokesman Gerry Brownlee said the result would be more pressure on the already stretched southern hydro lakes.
"This should be the cue for Energy Minister David Parker to announce the crisis measures he's been trying so hard to avoid," Mr Brownlee said.
A spokeswoman for Mr Parker said the industry was continuing to work together on finding ways to manage the electricity situation.
The time may come for a public power savings campaign, but right now it was not necessary, she said.
Contact Energy said a leak was discovered in one of the boiler tubes in the plant's steam generator system, forcing the closure of the plant while the fault was fixed.
The fault was expected to take about four days to repair, but the actual duration of the outage would not be known until a full inspection of the steam generator was completed, which would be undertaken when the plant had cooled today.
Contact Energy chief executive David Baldwin said the timing of the fault was unfortunate, given low hydro storage levels in the South Island lakes, but it was essential to fix the fault now.
"We're working to have the plant back up and running as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we have notified other generators and network companies so that Otahuhu's capacity might be covered with other generation options over the course of the outage," he said.
Mr Baldwin said one 100 megawatt unit at the New Plymouth power station was recommissioned yesterday - ahead of schedule - and was now operating at full load, which would help cover some of Otahuhu's capacity.
- NZPA
