Fault that caused mass streetlight outage in Wellington repaired

A mass streetlight outage was reported in Wellington central city and some outer suburbs. Photo / 123rf

A streetlight fault which plunged parts of Wellington City into darkness on Saturday night has been repaired.

On Saturday night a mass streetlight outage was reported in Wellington central city and some outer suburbs, when the lights failed to come on at dusk.

Wellington electricity control room manager Ross Fitzgibbon said there was a fault in the automatic system which turned the lights on each day.

"It was manually turned on at 7.45pm last night and it was repaired this morning," he said.

As one sub-station fed the majority of lights in Wellington City, the issue was reported in suburbs such as Miramar and Island Bay as well as the central city.

Wellington City Council media manager Richard MacLean said the lights usually turned on automatically when the sun went down.

"Street lights will probably come on at around 5.30pm now it's getting dark early," he said.

"As far as we know there was a problem with the timing device that automatically turns the streetlights on when it gets to dusk."

He said the darkness might have been more disruptive in Wellington's quieter suburbs.

"It was clearly a problem, especially in quieter suburban streets where there's not so much background light from shops and things like that.

"It was pretty dark out there, I was walking to the bus around 6.30 and you had to tread carefully in some streets because it was that dark."

"But it appears Wellington electricity has got the problem sorted so it should be back to normal tonight."