Auckland Battered by Winter Storms

New Zealand's Auckland Has Power Cuts After Storms

June 12 (Bloomberg) -- Power was cut to parts of Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, as high winds and storms battered the country.

Auckland's central business district and some suburbs lost power after overhead earth wires fell across 110-kilovolt lines at 8:32 a.m. local time, Transpower New Zealand Ltd., the national grid company, said in a statement e-mailed to Bloomberg News.

Vector Ltd., the nation's largest electricity distributor, said power was restored to most of Auckland by late afternoon, Auckland-based Vector said in a statement e-mailed to Bloomberg News. The fault occurred at Transpower's Otahuhu substation in south Auckland, Vector said.

The government wants greater security of power supply for Auckland, Energy Minister David Parker told Radio New Zealand in an interview. Parker, who had talks with executives at state-owned Transpower today, said an option may be to construct a second substation physically separate from Otahuhu.

"Transpower said they already had plans to have separate facilities at Otahuhu,'' Parker said. "I want them to also consider another substation that can deliver to the Auckland grid separate from Otahuhu.''

In areas without power, petrol stations won't be able to pump fuel and the outage is also putting pressure on the city's wastewater system which relies on electric pumps to move sewage, Vector said.

Areas of the South Island also had had power cuts because of the storms and snow, Transpower said.>