Lights out in West Auckland, Rodney and the North Shore

Another Transpower fault. How can anyone trust these people to plan the grid when they can't even run it? :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Thought it was very quiet up there!

We have just gotten it back on. Could not even get through to the faults line it was so busy, [!]that was within 5 mins of power going off!

Don't know the full story but it took out the power for the whole of Northland. We got ours back on about 11.10 after having lost it around 8.00am. This is Third World stuff - a glitch in Otahuhu can take out the power for a third of the country.[:0] Disgusting.

While it only inconvienced me in minor ways - i.e couldn't finish milking the cows, dirty milk machine, no water at house etc. this will have a huge impact on some businesses and no doubt will cost them dearly.

Cheers,
Ronnie

Our power went off about 8am and apparently it was a major outage for all of West Akl, North Shore and upper North Island. Really put a spanner in the works as I went to take DD to kindy but they said they had to close for the day as it was a health and safety issue (cause they would run out of running water without power, which meant that 20 kids using the toilets and washing hands, and eating etc wasn’t going to be safe)….apparently the local schools had also closed for the same issues. Bugger.

Meanwhile DH was stressing at home cause we work from home with our IT business of course our servers need power and customers are relying on that, so he went to put on our generator (which we’ve only bought recently and tested a few times)….after a lot of swearing and cursing he got it going but 1) it is petrol driven and it stinks and is really noisy 2) he only had enough petrol for maybe an hour and of course the petrol stations were shut due to no power/no eftpos etc 3) the exhaust on the generator was starting to overheat and came loose at one stage. He needs a custom built exhaust for it which he’s been trying to find someone to do that, but had no luck.

BUT thankfully the power came back on around 9:30 and things are back to normal. Although DD is at home with me all day as kindy is still shut due to other parents having to find alternative childcare and there wasn’t much point them opening for just a few kids (plus no one was is sure if the power will stay on!). Soooo drama’s all round this morning and a real PITA!!

Kate;286222 wrote: Another Transpower fault. How can anyone trust these people to plan the grid when they can't even run it? :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Careful, please make no accusations about the Operations division of a company, when you are peeved with the completely separate Grid Planning division. That's a bit like steaming off at the luggage handler if you had a bumpy flight.

Also please have some more facts on the matter, as to the pre-grid planning, operational limitations, and the actual cause of the fault.

According to www.nzherald.co.nz , one circuit was out of service for maintenance. To take a circuit out for work, there us usually a full grid analysis run multiple times to assess the risk, and to see what would happen if something else went wrong. It would have assessed and contingencies worked out to plan the outage and risk involved. It would have been planned for at least 3 months, and more analysis run each week to take into account other grid conditions as they came to hand. If the analysis came up with an unacceptable risk, then the outage would not have gone ahead.

Now the risk in the past of the second circuit failing while the first was out? From past experience, most likely 0.01% chance of something bad happening. Also from the herald news article - some bloke drove a forklift with a shipping container on it, into the lines. Knowing the circuits, then if he hit one, then he would have hit the other. And the result of hitting one or both? Same result, no power.

I'd be worried about the driver, silly mistake made but still in mortal danger of being electrocuted by 220,000 volts.

I can't see how Transpower Operations can be blamed for his mistake.