A fault on high voltage equipment at Northpower’s Kensington substation caused an outage for over 28,000 customers at 4pm yesterday.

While the substation was out of operation, power was switched from other parts of Northpower’s electricity network to quickly restore most customers within an hour.

Around 8,000 customers in the Kamo and Hikurangi areas remained without power until around 9.45pm, when the power was fully restored to all customers.

“With the fault being on high voltage equipment in our largest regional substation, the impact was larger and the outage was longer than we usually deal with,” says Josie Boyd, Northpower Network General Manager.

“Customers who had their power restored earlier were asked to conserve power to ensure that higher than usual loads on some parts of the network could be managed. People did a great job of conserving enough energy to help us keep the power on where we could, so we thank them for that.

“The team at Northpower worked really hard to get the power back on and we would like to thank all those affected for their patience and understanding.”

Northpower apologises for the inconvenience and is investigating the cause of the fault.