Power cut to Wellington

The cut affected sales. Photo / Herald on Sunday

It might be the country's power base - but yesterday there was no power in parts of the capital.

And now electricity bosses face a carpeting from new Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown, who wants to know how one digger in the wrong place could have taken out 4000 customers in the centre of the city.

A contractor is taking the blame for putting his digger's bucket through two power cables around 8.30am. It took four hours to restore power to affected properties, and major websites - including Kiwibank, NZ Post and Trade Me - went down nationally.

Wade-Brown said a debrief tomorrow would establish "whether it could have been avoided or resolved more quickly". She said the city would investigate whether it needed an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) to provide constant emergency power. She sympathised with businesses whose trade was affected.

Wellington Electricity spokesman Ryan Auger said the contractor sliced through two cables - one 11,000kV and one 33,800kV - and all cables carrying power into and out of the nearby Frederick St substation had to be tested before the network could be restarted.

He could not say how many complaints had been fielded about the power cut, as customers dealt with their individual electricity retailers rather than the provider.

At the Recycle Boutique clothing store on Cuba St, staff had to patrol a dark room to make sure customers were not stealing stock.

A staff member said the room, containing racks of clothes and changing rooms, was plunged into darkness, creating "security problems".

"We had to chuck extra girls in there to keep an eye on things, and we closed off the changing rooms," she said.

"We pretty much had to make do."

She said the loss of power had "definitely" affected sales, though the computers and cash registers were still operating.

"Due to the lack of changing rooms, people can't be bothered waiting so they just leave."

Wellington Chamber of Commerce president Jo Bransgrove said last night she was not aware of the power cut but believed it had not affected too many businesses at that time of the day.

"Most of the businesses in those areas are light industrial businesses along with car yards and the odd takeaway outlet, so we were perhaps very lucky," she said.

- Additional reporting Rebecca Lewis, Leigh van der Stoep