After the strongest winds in a decade lashed the Wellington region on Thursday, we’ve restored power to the bulk of affected customers.

Gusts of up to 160kph wreaked havoc on our network, felling lines and damaging key network equipment, impacting roughly 8000 customers. In response, our crews have worked 14-hour days since Thursday, managing safety with regular check ins and roster rotations to manage fatigue.

The safety of both staff and customers has been our number one focus, which is why we attended faults presenting an immediate safety risk first, followed by outages which impacted the most customers.

By Friday morning conditions had eased slightly, allowing us to begin restoring power to single-premise faults. Despite the remote location of some of these faults, coupled with the orange wind warning that remained in place, crews reduced outages to fewer than 700 customers by the end of the day.

After most area outages had been restored, on Saturday our attention turned to the remaining 400 customers impacted by low voltage and single-premise faults. Alongside our existing fault response efforts, we’ve been focused on continuing to make contact with these remaining customers so dispatch crews can safely restore power to them as quickly as possible. 

As of today, roughly 200 customers without power, and we’re continuing to reach out to them directly. Crew changes have been necessary to manage fatigue and ensure sufficient resources are available for the final restoration work. 

We anticipate restoring the bulk of its remaining customers without power by Monday evening, however further repairs will be necessary including Streetlight circuit restoration.

If you’re without power and haven’t been contacted yet, please call your electricity retailer directly so repair crews can be dispatched to restore supply.

Please remember to phone our emergency line on 0800 248 148 if you spot anything you think might be an electrical hazard, and treat all electrical equipment as live at all times. Call 111 if anyone's in danger or if there’s a fire or serious risk to property.

We acknowledge the extended disruption these outages have caused and thank customers for their continued patience while final restoration work is completed.