28 Jun 2022

Warning of power blackouts days after last emergency

6:29 pm on 28 June 2022

Transpower says it is not expecting there will be power cuts this evening because of high demand.

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Photo: Paul Moss Photographer Artist NZ [CC BY-SA 2.5]

Earlier this evening, the lines company asked power networks to increase supply, warning households faced outages if there was not enough power in the network.

Chief executive Alison Andrews said additional generation was offered in the market as a result of the notice.

She said at this stage she does not expect there will be any disruption to electricity supply.

Andrew said the low generation was due to higher than predicted electricity demand and less available wind generation.

Earlier, the lines company had asked the power companies to "ensure energy and reserve offers are accurate" and to increase that supply.

It was warning if there was not enough power in the network this evening, households might face outages.

The peak period was from 5pm to 7.30pm.

Transpower declared a grid emergency last Thursday morning.

The alert was posted after one of Contact Energy's gas turbine units at Stratford failed to start, Genesis Energy reported a fault at its Huntly plant and the wind dropped from a forecast 170 megawatts to just 30.

The warning lasted about an hour and a half but no-one was disconnected during the grid emergency and the system worked as intended, Transpower said afterwards.

The Electricity Authority said last week's power generation emergency was well handled by Transpower.

The authority's general manager of legal monitoring and compliance, Sarah Gillies, said she was happy with how the matter was dealt with.

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