Five-year wait for second power line

North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams said another line to feed the North Shore and Northland had been canned until his council appealed to the Electricity Commission. Photo / Kenny Rodger

A second power line which could prevent a repeat of yesterday's crippling electricity cuts across Auckland and Northland is still five years away.

An 18-tonne container handler pulled down the 220kV Henderson-Otahuhu overhead line about 8am, causing an outage affecting 280,000 homes and businesses across the North Shore and Northland.

Police received hundreds of calls as traffic lights went down and motorists in morning peak-traffic struggled to get to work.

Power was restored by 1pm, but the outage has angered three Auckland mayors.

Auckland City Mayor John Banks described the city's electricity infrastructure as "Third World".

"I have come to the end of my tether with this outfit, Transpower. They've caused hardship for a lot of people. It simply isn't good enough."

North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams said another line to feed the North Shore and Northland had been canned until his council appealed to the Electricity Commission.

Mr Williams said 20,000 businesses on the North Shore were without power yesterday morning and it caused "chaos" to traffic.

He said the cut highlighted the fragility of the national grid.

"You can't be reliant on old overhead lines floating around West Auckland," Mr Williams said.

He said ducting had been installed under the Northern Busway and the council was now waiting on Transpower.

"It just literally needs the wiring put in. It's approved and ready to go," Mr Williams said.

Rodney Mayor Penny Webster said that when it came to funding infrastructure, north Auckland was often forgotten.

"We're all jumping up and down about it."

Mrs Webster said the Hill St intersection at Warkworth on State Highway 1 was governed by traffic lights and was "chaos".

"I don't think the area gets the recognition that it needs. The whole Super City debate shows a lack of understanding."

Ken River of the New Zealand Refinery Company told TVNZ the cut was going to cost his company hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Transpower chief executive Patrick Strange said the $473 million second line would "prevent this sort of event occurring in the future".

Specialised Containers director Dion Ross said his company was looking into how the accident happened. He said the container handler driver had been in shock and has not yet been spoken to.

The power outage also caused delays to West Auckland trains.

Veolia Transport runs the passenger trains in Auckland. The company's spokeswoman Silva Bassett said all the standby points and signals came on after the power cut, except those between Waitakere and Swanson.

Ms Bassett said the failure caused one train to be delayed by 40 minutes and others faced delays of 20 minutes as the knock-on effect of late trains affected other services.