Powerco working to reconnect customers following strong weekend winds - 9am update

Monday, February 14, 2022
Powerco crews are out in force this morning reconnecting customers after strong wind and rain caused a number of outages over the weekend.

Approximately 14,000 customers remain without power across Powerco’s networks as at 9am Monday morning, with Bay of Plenty and Taranaki hardest hit – 6,391 and 3,053 customers without power respectively.

There are also 2,595 customers without power in the Coromandel, Thames, Waihi and South Waikato areas combined, 855 in Whanganui, 596 in the Manawatū, and 539 in the Wairarapa.

Network Operations Manager Scott Horniblow says teams are working as quickly as they can to clear debris and restore customers now that conditions have settled.

“Conditions were very challenging at times yesterday, making it unsafe to scale ladders and carry out reconnection work. As winds started dying down yesterday afternoon we were able to continue into the evening with restoration work, and we’re picking up again this morning,” he says.

Planned maintenance outages across Powerco’s network have been postponed to allow reconnection work to continue at pace.

“Reconnecting customers is our priority at the moment, so we have postponed planned works for Monday and Tuesday so crews can focus on the reconnection work at hand.” says Scott.

“We’d like to thank customers for their patience as we work to reconnect them.”

Current outage information can be found here
 

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