While most of our equipment is located in the road/rail reserve or on land owned by us, some of it is on private property.

Rights and responsibilities

Older lines and cables, poles, substations and other network equipment (assets) installed on private land or within buildings before 1993 are protected under existing use rights by the Electricity Act 1992 (the Act). This means that much of our equipment will not have, or need, an easement. An easement is a property interest registered on a property's title.

The Act provides us with a statutory right of access to our assets so that we can inspect, maintain/upgrade, operate or repair them, but property owners and occupiers have certain rights too.

For example, Wellington Electricity or its contractors must give reasonable notice before entering onto land where our assets are located, apart from in an emergency – that is, to keep the power on, safe, or to prevent harm to life or property.

Even in an emergency, our contractors must still let the owner or occupier of the land know as soon as possible, which might in some cases be retrospectively.

An owner or occupier may:

• refuse access if the Act is not followed
• set reasonable conditions relating to entry, like requesting that our contractor reports to a reception or security desk on commercial premises
• request to move assets at their expense, which we're obliged to provide a quote for.

If we need to access your property and inadvertently damage it in any way, we'll always reinstate the land back to how it was (as far as is reasonably practicable) before we entered onto it.

Privately-owned assets

Not all electrical assets on private property are owned by us. For example, there are a number of privately-owned power poles across the Wellington region that are the responsibility of landowners (or in some cases, other pole owners such as Chorus) to maintain.

These are known as service poles and generally serve a single property. In cases where multiple properties are supplied via a service pole, Wellington Electricity may have an interest in the pole but doesn't necessarily own it.

If we identify any pole as being in a potentially unsafe condition during the course of our work, we'll inform the owner of the pole so that they can make arrangements to have it repaired or replaced by a qualified electrical contractor.

Where we have an interest in the pole, there may be instances where we're able to arrange replacement of the pole at no cost to the landowner. When this happens, we become the owner of the new pole and take responsibility for its ongoing maintenance.

Power lines (overhead) and cables (underground) running from a point of supply to a property are known as 'service lines/cables'. The owner of the property being supplied is responsible for the maintenance and repair of these assets on their property.

Private networks

There are also several types of private electricity networks that are connected to our network. The most common of these are embedded networks, which operate independently and are considered electricity distributors just like us.

In these cases, we provide a supply of electricity at a gate, or gateway, installation control point (ICP), with anything beyond that being the responsibility of the embedded network owner to manage.

Any consumers connected to other types of private network are considered as being supplied directly by Wellington Electricity. However, any electrical equipment beyond our point of supply to the private network (also known as the network demarcation point) is the responsibility of the private network owner to maintain.

Private networks are most commonly found in multi-occupation commercial and residential premises (like office blocks, shopping malls, airports and apartment buildings), but can sometimes be found in rural areas too.