Fix in sight for some but not all of those without power in Hawke’s Bay

Transpower is warning some homes and businesses in Hawke’s Bay may remain without power even after it completes work to bypass its crippled Redclyffe substation on Friday evening.

The national grid operator has been racing to re-route power supplies to Hawke’s Bay through a variety of workarounds after its “crucial” Redclyffe substation was flooded on Tuesday.

It is currently re-routing the high-voltage 220KV power line that fed into Redclyffe to instead supply its Whakatu substation north-east of Hastings, to allow Napier-based lines company Unison to reconnect more of its customers.

Transpower said in an update on Friday morning that once the bypass was complete, Unison would begin progressively restoring power to “some but not all homes and businesses” in Hawke’s Bay that did not have power “including urban parts of Napier and some remaining areas of Hastings such as Clive, Te Awanga and Whakatu”.

As of Friday morning, 37,400 homes and businesses normally supplied by Unison were without power, including 31,630 homes and business in Napier which was “the area most impacted by the loss of the Redclyffe substation”, it said.

Power appears to be returning faster to the Gisborne region, where the more widespread ongoing infrastructure problems include damage to telecommunications services caused by broken fibre-optic cables.

Jarred Moroney, general manager of Gisborne-based lines company Eastland Network, said it had been able to restore power to a further 2000 customers overnight on Thursday.

As of Friday morning, 2100 customers on its network remained without power, including 1000 customers in Wairoa, he said.

Mains power had been restored to Ruatorea, Te Araroa and Tokomaru Bay while Tolaga Bay was getting power from a generator, he said.

Power was also back on in Mahia, Morere and in more areas in Wairoa but “a number of faults in these areas still need to be repaired”, he said.

Many of those still without power were in rural areas and remote communities where access was difficult, and there was major damage to power poles and wires, Moroney said.

“Our crews and contractors continue to work hard to restore faults wherever they can gain access, by road and by air.”

Moroney said that despite the progress restoring electricity, the Gisborne region had largely been without internet and phone services, due to major breaks in Chorus’ fibre-optic cable.

Telcos have been installing some satellite backhaul links to connect their cellsites until the fibre cable is repaired, and some organisations were getting online with Starlink.

Free wi-fi was available at the Lawson Field Theatre, next to Gisborne District Council, between 8am and 8pm, he said, though there is a 10-minute cap on usage.