Just saw this ad on Facebook

Not something you would ever see in New Zealand.

The sole power line to the entire Auckland region failed again this afternoon cutting power to around one million people. The only operating power station north of Hamilton is the Huntly coal fired station which cannot supply power to all of Auckland so Transpower cut power to all of Auckland except for essential services like hospitals, sewage and water supply.

However the reporting on both NZ Herald and Stuff reads quite funny:

Police say power has been restored to many of the 5000 Auckland homes left in the dark after a fire underneath power lines prompted mass power cuts from the Waikato to Northland and throughout Auckland this afternoon.

Now I am sure that there are more than 5000 homes in these areas:

Among the Auckland suburbs affected were Remuera, Ponsonby, Epsom, East Tamaki, Freemans Bay, Manukau, Mt Wellington, Newmarket, Onehunga, Birkdale, Beachhaven, Northcote, Glenfield, Manly, Helensville, Hauraki, Forest Hill, East Coast Road, Albany and Belmont.

In fact this image was posted on stuff.co.nz showing the extend of the outage:

Okay the power has just been restored to my flat on Auckland’s North Shore after a cut lasting around exactly an hour and a half.

I am not grumpy about the cut, they are a fact of life.

What I am grumpy about is the fact that it is not a storm so the reasoning for the cut seems to be a little odd. At first my flatmates thought a car had hit a local power pole. But as we have found out the cut is to 280,000 customers in West Auckland, North Shore, and Northland. Which would mean upwards of 500,000+ people would be without power this morning. So why is the power out:

“Just after 8.00am this morning a circuit on the Otahuhu to Henderson 220 kV line tripped while the other circuit was out for maintenance, causing loss of supply for North Auckland and Northland.” – stuff.co.nz

Sound familar?

Lets think back to 2006:

“The 2006 Auckland Blackout refers to the massive electrical blackout in Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand, on 12 June 2006. It started at 8:30 am local time, with most areas of Auckland regaining power by 2:45 pm local time. It affected some 230,000 customers had an impact on at least 700,000 people in and around the city.

The immediate cause of the blackout was determined to be a grounding cable falling across a 110kV transmission line at the Otahuhu sub-station. This was caused by the failure of a corroded shackle, as the result of unusually high winds.^[1] This equipment is part of the national grid, owned and operated by Transpower.

Investigation of this incident found that maintenance of the electricity transmission system was not adequate and that this substation had major and minor design deficiencies.^{” –} 2006 Auckland Blackout

Which in turn sounds very familar to this:

The 1998 Auckland power crisis was a five-week-long power outage.

Almost all of downtown Auckland in New Zealand was supplied electricity by Mercury Energy via four power cables, two of them 40-year-old oil-filled cables that were past their replacement date. One of the cables failed on 20 January, possibly due to the unusually hot and dry conditions, another on 9 February. Due to the increased load from the failure of the first cables, the remaining two failed on 19 and 20 February, leaving about 20 city blocks (except parts of a few streets) without power. - 1998 Auckland power crisis

So in eleven years have we learnt or done anything to stop these incidents repeating? It seems not.

In 1998 the Auckland CBD lost power for two weeks and had continualled rolling outages for a further six weeks after three cables supplying power to the city all failed in Unison.

In 2007 there was another massive power outage after strong winds took down one power pylon cable and crippled the entire city’s supply.

Now in 2009 we have three transformers fail in unsion and knock out a large proprotion of the city.

More than a decade after the first major incident of this type it still fails me how the same scenario is repeating on a semi regular basis. Surely something as vital as power should be built with redundant supply lines.

Only in NZ?