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The dire state of New Zealand's electricity network is laid bare in a report which says the country has spent almost nothing upgrading the system for almost 20 years.
Transpower has been told its approach is "not sustainable" and the nation's power grid runs the risk of reaching a point from which "it will be extremely difficult to recover".
Work has started to improve the network following the report, but concern over the red tape it might have to clear has caused Infrastructure Minister Gerry Brownlee to fire a warning shot at energy regulator, the Electricity Commission. He said it caused delays with "extraordinary, convoluted, complex and quite mindbogglingly stupid rationale" for the need to have "endless discussions" over options for upgrading the network.
Brownlee warned change was coming to the sector and said the commission "needs to show they're being pretty co-operative".
The report was prepared for Transpower by expert consultants from the US and Britain and warned the managers of the state-owned grid to urgently replace its aged network.
It comes as Transpower warns of further blackouts before the system is upgraded, after parts of Auckland were left without power last week.
The DuPont report, delivered by consultants Ed Thornton from Houston and Britain's Bill Wilkinson in September, was commissioned by Transpower chief executive Patrick Strange, who said it led to the company's $3.8 billion, five-year upgrade programme.
"There's a lot being done already. It will be four to six years before we are back where we would like to be."
Strange said it had been predicted there would be another serious outage before the grid had been properly upgraded. The power cut in Auckland last week was because of the failure of a 38-year-old transformer.
While that is considered young for such an asset, the report says 40 per cent of Transpower's 1116 transformers are between 40 and 70 years old.
The report warns "many assets are rapidly approaching end of life and need to be replaced" and says the network maintenance is not enough.
"Operating to failure and relying on repair is not sustainable," the consultants warned. They also found that Transpower had lost staff with "considerable intellectual knowledge" during the period of low investment and needed to find replacements with specialist knowledge.
It says remaining staff have developed an "innovative way" to solving problems because they have needed to be good at keeping old equipment running, rather than new gear.
Brownlee said he was concerned about the commission's role.
He said the grid was "robust" although "in many parts quite aged". There were a "dodgy couple of years" ahead until it was fixed.
