Northland power outage: Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown claims bolt removal led to pylon fall

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown believes the fallen pylon which caused a mass power failure across the entire Northland region was a result of bolts being removed from its base during maintenance.

About 100,000 people were left without power when a pylon holding Transpower’s two 220-kilovolt (kV) transmission lines into Northland toppled over on a farm near Glorit, south of Wellsford, about 11am on Thursday.

In a column for the Post today, Brown said pulling all of the outside foundation bolts at one time guarantees that a pylon will topple over.

“This is obviously what happened, particularly as the base plates on the lifted side show no distortion. I am making this assessment well before any official investigation, which will just confirm exactly what I am saying.”

Transpower said in a statement it was unhelpful to speculate on the cause and the agency is focused on restoring electricity supply as quickly as possible for the people of Northland.

A fallen transmission pylon at Glorit north of Auckland. Photo / NZME

“That had to be our priority. It is complex and challenging work, we were moving at pace, and distractions would not have helped.

“We have appointed an external party to lead our investigation and we will announce more details of that in coming days.”

Brown’s office has also been approached for comment.

In the Post piece, Brown posited heads need to roll following failures like this.

“A board needs a strong complement of people who understand the technical challenges facing the industry. This is the most important thing. The public who need the electricity don’t care about anything other than reliability,” Brown wrote.

Power was largely restored on Thursday night when Transpower increased the load on two of its 110kV circuits in the vicinity and asked people and businesses to reduce their electricity consumption.

Transpower announced earlier today it had restored further electricity supply into Northland.

Fears the crucial work might necessitate another power cut today were allayed through the efforts of Northlanders who conserved enough electricity for an outage to be avoided.

However, Transpower bosses warned there could still be outages, albeit short-lived ones, as full supply is yet to be restored and this may not occur until at least Friday.

Work began yesterday to transfer one of the 220kV lines from the fallen pylon on to a newly erected temporary Lindsay pole, but it had to be abandoned due to bad weather in the afternoon which caused dangerous working conditions. However, there was sufficient supply to meet the weekend’s lesser demand through the circuits already in place.

Today, Transpower successfully completed the reconfiguration work, with the circuit re-livened shortly after 2pm.

Transpower staff prepare to install a temporary tower for a partial transfer of the electricity supply into Northland following the mysterious sudden collapse of a pylon. Photo / Transpower

Energy Minister Simeon Brown is promising a full review of the “unacceptable” region-wide power outage.

Brown drove to Northland on Friday to see the damaged pylon. He then met with local mayors and emergency operators.

He shared his concern for Northlanders still without power and impacted businesses.

“It is unacceptable what happened yesterday; it just should not happen.”

On top of Transpower’s own investigation, Brown will ask the Electricity Authority to review the incident and is considering a Government review.

Authority chief executive Sarah Gillies has confirmed it will be undertaking a review after the minister’s statement.

“Electricity consumers need to have confidence their electricity supply is as reliable as possible. Our review will seek that assurance on behalf of consumers,” Gillies said.