Transpower to investigate BOP outage

Transpower is investigating how lightning strikes cut power to 74,000 Bay of Plenty homes on Saturday.

The company believes several substations and a major powerline were hit, however a spokeswoman said such a weather related outage was unusual.

Powerco network operations manager Ross Dixon said customers in Tauranga, Mt Maunganui and Te Puke were without power from 5.20pm until 6.40pm yesterday.

A report from Transpower was expected within two days.

- NZPA