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Join Now by Mark Ryle, Transparwer, executive general manager of grid Delivery.

Mark, Good morning to you.

The morning, Cary.

How are you doing with your power outages across the affected network?

Firstly, just apologize to all the consumers affected.

Obviously, we try really hard to avoid these things happening and work really hard when they do to restore.

So apologize front yere, not on the morning you want when you come in the office, but we are actively working with the distribution businesses to restore all the all the load.

At the moment.

That process does take time and will probably continue to occur over the next couple of hours.

Given the severe weather event and the winds we've seen.

There may also be damage and the distribution network, so some people may take longer because of that course, But from the transper network perspective, you will work to make all those sites that are still out available over next like I say, two hours.

How do you restore them?

I think people understand that in these dreadful, deadly winds, you know, with so many trees coming down and possibly you know, strong gusts, how do you restore power lines in this kind of weather.

Yeat, Yes we have.

We've got a context with three circuits that travel sort of from the Canterbury region up to the Nelson top of the South Island and then power comes back down through the West coast.

Those three circuits are robust, any one of them can handle the load.

Unfortunately, we've had all three of those circuits trip out on the early hour this morning or this morning through seven forty five due to the weather event going through in an area sort of west and north inland of Kaikoura.

So we basically manage the whole system.

We have a computer system constantly monitoring everything as you can imagine live control rooms.

So we've been able to restore two of those circuits back into service and we have power through to our substation at Kickawa, and we're now working the distribution.

North Canterbury has been restored and we're now working with the distribution companies to continue that process of restoring North.

You do have to balance load to demand and supply otherwise if things get out of step, things could trip out again.

So as a slow process.

If unfortunately we can't just whack a switch and turn everything back on immediately.

We'd love to be able to do that and we just need to manage that risk.

So we've got teams working on that.

Now.

Do you know how many households businesses are affected?

Yeah, the numbers we had around about eighty thousand at the start of the artists.

That number will be progressively reducing as we go with.

I said, I think we've got North Canterbury unrestored least through ound network, and I know we've got power through the Stoke in the Tasman region.

I've got a separate team working on getting power further north up the West coast.

So those numbers will drop fairly quickly, but it can pack a while.

The distribution companies auto also to switch through their networks to all their feeders, so that process is ongoing.

In fact, we've got two circuits back in as good news.

We've got condundancy there, but we are still in a severe wind event and that wind moves further south, so we'll be working really hard to stay in front of it and hopefully nothing but this will happen again.

But there is that risk, and there obviously could also be damage and the distribution networks that might affect consumers.

What would you recommend people do?

Close the shop for the day, settle in and prepare for a day without power.

But like I said, I'm hopeful that what we're doing at the moment is restoring power in the next couple of hours, which should be kod good.

We've got two of the three circuits pickin and we're patrolling the third, so that that is a good, good situation to be in.

It.

We can't guarantee that whether one affect us again, no, but expect the worst and he'll be one.

Yes, in a sort of whether there's always a risk of power systems unfortunate when you get extreme wed level winds, Branches, trees, all sorts of things can affect and be blown into and around and through circuits.

Well, I appreciate the work that you're doing and I thank you very much for the update.

How do you recommend that people stay in touch?

Will you be providing updates?

So yeah, our Transpower Facebook page will be updated by our comms team, So anyone who is at least without power at this point have a look there.

That'll give us an update on how we're connecting the distribution businesses.

If we say the substation that you're close to is backed live and you still don't have power, then it'll have look at your dB or follow your DB's website because they'll sort of keep updates from there.

And we really apologize to consumers.

We work really hard to avoid these things.

We can so out make sure the networks robust, but you significant weather has gone through that location and affected three circuits, which is rare and very unfortunate.

I don't think you have to apologize.

I don't think there's much but I know, I know we're relying.

I know we rely on power.

It's important, it's very good whenever that's in never let's impacted.

It impacts consumers, but I can assure you were working really hard to minimize that impact.

I can hear that.

Thank you very much for your time.

Mark rail Transparer, executive general manager of Good Delivery, News Talk said been.

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