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State-owned electricity market operator Transpower has been fined $150,000 by the Electricity Authority for its role in the August 2021 power cuts.
About 34,350 homes, mostly in the central North Island, had their electricity cut off without warning on August 9, 2021, when a cold snap coincided with an unplanned outage of Genesis' Tokaanu hydro power station on the Tongariro River.
Generators, including Genesis, initially received some of the early blame for the power cuts.
But it quickly emerged that Transpower's warnings to generators earlier that day that power supplies were looking tight that evening were not adequate.
A miscalculation by Transpower that evening made matters significantly worse and ultimately resulted in the regional blackout.
It told some lines companies that they needed to shed more demand than was actually necessary.
The $150,000 fine will essentially be a money-go-round.
The state-owned enterprise is wholly-owned by the Crown, and Electricity Authority spokesperson Sean Martin confirmed the fine would be payable to the Crown.
Transpower will also pay costs of $6207.50 to the authority.
Electricity Authority compliance manager Peter Kerr says that Transpower has made a 'series of improvements” as a result of the 2021 outage and that subsequent grid emergencies have been managed far more effectively.
1 comment
Pleased when I saw this...
Posted on 09-05-2023 12:43 | By morepork
... then realized it makes no difference. Significant investment in the national electricity reticulation, with redundant pathways and nodes for populated areas, still needs to be made and it won't be. Sadly, the outlook for our energy delivery is that it will remain equivalent to that of a third world country, with breaks that affect thousands of people for significant amounts of time, for the foreseeable future. Some drunken idiot hits a power pole and a community is plunged into darkness. As long as that is acceptable, expect no more.
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