Mount power outage explained

The lights were out in the Mount Maunganui CBD for around an hour on Saturday night. Photo and video: Rosalie Liddle Crawford.

The cause of the power cut that affected more than 4000 properties in Mount Maunganui on Saturday night has been revealed.

Powerco network operations manager Phil Marsh says around 4200 Powerco customers in and around the Port Tauranga lost supply for around an hour.

'A line servicing a substation at the port failed at around 9.35pm,” he says.

'Contractors were able to identify the cause of the fault and reconnect all customers by 10.30pm.”

During the power outage parts of the Mount Maunganui CBD were without electricity, affecting street lights as well as businesses.

A couple in Papamoa also reported a ‘ball of lighting' appearing in their lounge.

'Wow just had a lightning ball in the lounge! About the size of a basketball, orange, white glow. Two to three seconds then a loud bang as it disappeared,” wrote Wayne Shadbolt on Facebook.

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2 comments

Wayne

Posted on 15-05-2018 16:04 | By maildrop

Wow, sounds incredible. Ten o'clock Saturday night eh. Are you sure you'd not overdone the Mary Jane man?


Time?

Posted on 15-05-2018 19:29 | By The Sage

We were at a Restaurant downtown the Mount and the power went out at 8.30pm, not 9.30pm. The whole downtown area was out and the lights did not come on until around the library area. Several sets of traffic lights in Hewletts Road were out, as were batches of street lights over the harbour bridge. This is more far reaching than PowerCo have stated.


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