Power restored to Wellington CBD after outage

Electricity has been restored to parts of Wellington's central business district affected by a power cut this afternoon.

Parliament, Lambton Quay, Wellington District Court and some parts of Thorndon were affected by the 4.20pm outage.

Power to the Beehive and wider parliamentary complex also went out.

Emergency generators did kick in, but then briefly shut down after they became overloaded before restarting.

The last power cut to the area caused some concerns when Parliament's generators failed to come on just as Cabinet was about to start meeting.

Power to traffic lights in the area was also cut, and a total of 1196 customers were affected, Wellington Electricity Lines Limited (WEL) spokesman Damien Batey said.

An underground cable at the substation on Moore Street was the cause of the fault, Mr Batey said.

Crews were sent to investigate and fix the fault, and power was restored by 4.55pm.

Wellington Railway Station was affected briefly, but services were running on time, a KiwiRail spokesman told The Dominion Post.

WEL apologised for the inconvenience and would investigate the cause of the outage.

- NZPA