We’re committed to ensuring our networks are reliable for our customers and resilient to weather events, climate change and cyber threats. Read about our progress and goals for Pou whirinaki below.

Our projects

Explore what we’ve been working on to keep our networks reliable and resilient for our customers. 

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Why arent all electricity lines underground

  • Ensuring reliable and resilient networks

    Goals and targets

    Here’s what we want to achieve for Pou whirinaki over the short, medium and long-term.

    Goals and targets FY24

    • Develop a comprehensive resilience strategy, with roadmap and early actions in place during FY24.  This will include our plans for mitigation of physcial climate change risks and reflecting our customers' energy resilience needs. 
    • Implement a new Risk Management Framework across the business aligned with our four strategic themes; Deliver for our customers, Get ready to do more for our customers, Transform our customer experience, and Serve new customers.
    • Transition our internal cyber risk management framework to the updated accreditation of ISO-27001:2022. 
    • Keep our customers’ energy on for an average of 99.95% of the time.
    • Physical and Transitional climate change risks are included in our risk registers, and our first Adaptation and Resilience Plan is reflected in our Asset Management Plans.
    • Deliver energy security to gas customers by keeping gas flowing 99.99% of the time.
    • Achieve <100 pipe leaks per 1,000km per annum.
    • Undertake our first round of gas leak detection, using new equipment, that will provide more accurate data to determine specific emissions mitigation options.
     
    • Evaluate gas leakage data quarterly using the Marcogaz leakage model.

     

    • Implementation of Powerco's resilience strategy.
    • Implementation of our Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS) to support the reliability and resilience of supply. 

  • Ensuring reliable and resilient networks

    What we've done FY23

    We've been making progress towards our Pou whirinaki goals and targets. Here's what we worked on between 1 April 2022 - 31 March 2023.

    What we’ve done FY23

    • A new enterprise-wide Risk Management Policy and Framework has been developed that provides a priority-based approach to identify, assess and address environmental, social, governance and operational-related risks.
    • Powerco has maintained its cyber security maturity at a level that is resilient against most cyber threats and is well-prepared to respond in the event of an incident. The focus for FY23 was improving staff awareness of external cyber threats.
    • Material climate data such as coastal erosion, coastal inundation, and flooding layers have been uploaded into Powerco's GIS platform. 
    • Due to the major events such as Cyclone Gabrielle, the target to keep our customers' power on for an average of 99.95% of the time was not met. However normalising for major events we achieved 99.96%.
    • Our reporting for storm resilience improved during FY23, and included impact of weather events and windspeed on our network resilience.  Further reporting improvements are planned for FY24. 
    • More than 500 low voltage monitors were installed during FY23. The information provided by these monitors was used to create a Distributed Generation hosting capacity map that indicates potential capacity for EV charging stations and other distributed energy oppportunities.
    • We delivered gas to our customers 99.99986% of the time.
    • During FY23 we detected and fixed 65.65 leaks per 1000kms.  This is within our target of <100 pipe leaks per 1,000km per annum.
    • The Marcogaz model was established to determine specific gas loss (and emissions) using historic gas leak data. The next step is to use the model to track and report on leakage every 3 months.
     

     

    • The FY23 Asset Management Plan (AMP) includes network resilience planning, based on physical risk work undertaken in 2020. This will be further updated with the development of an adaptation and resilience plan, for inclusion in the 2024 AMP.
    • Climate scenarios have been established and integrated into business planning. FY24 will focus on physical risk analysis and the development of an adaption and resilience strategy.
     

  • Ensuring reliable and resilient networks

    What we've done FY22

    We've been making progress towards our Pou whirinaki goals and targets. Here's what we worked on between 1 April 2021 - 31 March 2022.

    What we’ve done FY22

    • We kept our customers’ electricity on for an average of 99.95% of the time. Learn more
    • We replaced or reinforced 4,475 poles, exceeding our target of 3,582. Learn more
    • We replaced 208km of overhead lines, exceeding our target of 195km. Learn more
    • We managed 16,210 sites, 12% more than last year and exceeding our target of 9263. Learn more
    • We kept the gas flowing to our customers 99.99% of the time.
    • We delivered the majority of planned investment projects related to our safety, reliability/resilience drivers as set out in our Gas Asset Management Plan. This includes five upgrades fully completed to help with long term energy security to our gas customers. Learn more
    • We achieved a 4.1 out of 5 on the Gartner scale, very close to our intended target of 4.2 and indicative of a high level of maturity in this area. In FY23, we are moving to employee-led cyber security.
     
    • FY22 marks year four of our five-year CPP, that will end on 31 March 2023.  We continue to see a decline in high voltage faults and improved network maintenance and renewals despite an increase in storm days and extreme weather events like Tropical Cyclone Dovi. 97% of our maintenace programme was completed. Addressing defects found through site visits and poletop photography still remains a priority. Delivery of our CPP programme will be completed in March 2023, followed by a final Annual Delivery Report that will disclose our performance.
    • To maintain electricity resilience and reliability, the three key drivers for our investment programme post CPP are: (1) increase in work for distributed generation (2) network preparation for increased electrification of communities, and (3) climate resilience.  One of our first steps post-CPP will be to undertake a review of how we assess resilience to inform investment forecasts within the business.
    • As part of our wider approach to climate change resilience, we’re developing a physical adaptation strategy for our assets based on climate hazard mapping.
    • We’re currently building a low-power wireless communication network called the Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN).  In FY22, we installed 36 radio base stations to create this network. In FY23, we expect the first new LoRaWAN-based sensors to be installed, enhancing our visibility of our electricity network. Learn more
    • Work is underway to assess our network capacity for distributed generation. This includes our low voltage network monitoring programme. We’re also undertaking studies to assess the hosting capacity of our LV network for distributed generation.
    • We achieved ISO27001 accreditation during FY22 – an international standard for managing information security. Our future plans for cyber security resilience include risk mapping the vulnerability of our process and systems and increasing staff ownership of information security.
     
    • We invested $165m (out of a target of $196m) in electricity network renewal and growth projects and initiatives. We moved our focus from small asset renewal projects to major projects such as new network lines in order to deliver them on time. Learn more. 

     

Keeping trees away to keep lights on

Our target: manage over 7,472 tree sites between January and September 2021.

Our mahi: we love trees - but not in overhead lines where they can cause outages. We managed over 14,300 tree sites to help ensure the lights stayed on for our customers.

Learn more

The pillars of our work