Major power cut cripples Wellington

Last updated 08:31 21/01/2009

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Power has been fully restored to central Wellington this morning after a major outage which caused chaos in the capital, including trapping office workers in lifts.

Most of central Wellington was without power for over an hour, including the capital's traffic lights, inner city offices, apartments, and trolley buses.

The outage, which began around 7.45am, affected suburbs as far south-east as Worser Bay and as far north as Johnsonville and Khandallah.

Transpower said its Central Park and Kaiwharawhara substations suffered faults at 7.42am this morning, causing 25,000 customers in Wellington's CBD to lose electricity.

The Fire Service responded to seven callouts of people stuck in elevators and two reports of smoke from cold-starting generators.

All of the people were successfully rescued from the lifts without injury.

Five fire trucks were dispatched to attend various incidents, including two alarms on the Terrace, which went off because of the outage.

Electricity progressively resumed from 8.30am when the Kaiwharawhara Substation was restored and electricity was fully restored at 9.02am.

"The fault was within the secondary system," a Transpower statement said. "The initiating event was a faulty relay at Wilton Substation and this caused an unanticipated flow-on effect to its connected substations.

"Transpower is confident the issue has been resolved," it said.

A Wellington Electricity spokesman said it was monitoring the electrical load just to make sure that there wass enough capacity. "So far, so good and we hope to have no further interruptions throughout the day.

"We need to keep a very close eye on how much power is being consumed while further investigations are continuing."

But electricity consumers were not being asked to change their behaviours, he said.

A Wellington Hospital spokesman said the four of its generators were used. No patients had been affected by the outage.

A Wellington Airport spokeswoman said generators had been used and there were no delays to flights.

On Broadway in Miramar a smoking power line was reported.

- Dominion Post, Stuff.co.nz and NZPA

* Comments on this story are now closed.

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291 comments

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Oldest First

lawwwls! #291 05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

LOL @ Garreth and the ensuing tirade of replies.

Classic!

Deidre Gunn #290 05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

The power was out for just over two hours - I work on the Terrace and the power went out at 7:45 (approx) and wasn't restored until 9:45 (approx). Power surged immediately after the outaage as if the power was trying to come back on but just went out again immediately. I was already in at work and stayed in the building along with other collegues (with no lights or power). Apparently everyone else was on the streets and a lot of people couldn't get into their buildings.

This was a major outage.

Don #289 05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

Seeing as most people had a late start at work, shouldn't you all be working through lunch to make up for that lost two minutes? (instead of abusing poor Garreth) Get back to work slackers!!! haha :P

JAY #288 05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

Haha - Half of the comments here appear to revolve around Garreth's comments. Quite amusing lunch time reading.

After walking from one end of the terrace to the other it was apparent this power outage affected a significant part of the CBD. According to sources, the outage didn't affect business, or at least some businesses on the waterfront.

Everything on the Terrace, Lampton, Willis (Main CBD) was without power. We were without power on Willis shortly before 8am through to 9am. A little over an hour without power.

It could be worse - We could be in Auckland. How many days/weeks were they without power?

Toxith O'Grady #287 05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

It's known as a 'power outage', people. Power Cuts are no longer the preferred nomenclature. Get with the program.

Shane #286 05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

I had no idea what was going on when I came out of the train station into Wellington, but I hadn't seen so many people standing around on the streets. The lights were quite chaotic... there was one set working along Customhouse Quay, but all the others it was 'every car for yourself'.

Being a pedestrian hasn't been quite so much fun, though. :)

press play #285 05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

You sad sad person, walking 11 flights of stairs while people are on the dangerous roads with no traffic lights and law breaking bus drivers!

Thousands of dollards lost due to payments systems going down and the odd unfortunate 11 who were stuck in lifts for over an hour.

Yes DK we feel you pain....

Daniel #284 05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

Don't know where you were Garreth but it was out for over an hour where i was.

Shane #283 05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

Crikey - would hate to see the reaction in the event of something really serious - ie: earthquake....

Paul #282 05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

Rubbish Garreth - our office power was out from approx 7.40am to approx 9am. A fair bit longer than 2 minutes.

Maybe only two minutes for you but it certainly crippled our part of town for over an hour.