No right time for outage

WAIPA Networks general manager Ray Milner (left) and Transpower grid asset manager Bob Simpson field questions at Thursday afternoon’s public meeting. 029081AD

By Dean Taylor

No-one wants their electricity turned off for nine hours - but it is inevitable one way or the other according to Transpower.

The company was in town Thursday to hold talks with Waipa Networks and the public about a planned maintenance shut-down for the greater Te Awamutu region.

Grid asset manager Bob Simpson says Te Awamutu has one feeder from Karapiro and there were issues on that line which required a shut down for maintenance. He explained that the work required was simply too dangerous to conduct using live line techniques. It involved replacing some equipment at Karapiro which was heating to dangerous levels and removing bird nests from the Te Awamutu sub-station.

Having the electricity shut down would allow the work to be done properly and in a controlled manner.

Mr Simpson says the alternative would inevitably be an unplanned outage because of failure and that could be for a long period because of the possible emergency nature of the event, and then all the required work would not be undertaken.

Outages for this type of work were usually planned on a four year cycle, with Te Awamutu due again in 2010, but this work was urgent. Mr Simpson says after this work the cycle would change to reflect that and the next schedules shut down would become 2012.

It was explained that the planned outage allowed for six hours of work, an extra hour for contingencies and one hour each side for controlled shut down of the system and reintroduction of service when work is complete. During the planned outage Waipa Networks staff would take the opportunity to undertake maintenance on its network.

Transpower wanted to gauge the feeling from the public before setting a date and take into consideration the community needs, commercial needs and agricultural needs.

Mr Simpson says generally the preferred day for an outage is a Sunday, and he proposed a day in late February with an extra day scheduled early March in case the work could not proceed on the first planned date. Usually outages were planned to start from about 8am.