Power cut in Fairlie

Power was cut to all Alpine Energy customers in the Fairlie, Cricklewood and Burkes Pass areas last night.

Chief executive Andrew Tombs said the cause of the outage was unclear, but that power was restored to all areas by 8pm.

The 33,000-volt main line had "tripped out" about 4.45pm.

Alpine Energy crews had "patrolled the whole line and there are no obvious problems," Mr Tombs said. They were hoping to isolate the fault while restoring electricity to customers in stages.

An earlier 30-minute outage was reported in Oamaru, but Mr Tombs said the incidents were almost certainly unrelated because Oamaru's power supply falls under Network Waitaki's service area. Approximately 2000 Oamaru residents were left without electricity about 3pm

Network Waitaki operations manager David Paterson said it would be some time before staff established the cause of the outage.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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