Seagull causes inner city power outage

Power has since been restored. File photo.

A seagull coming in contact with power lines is being put down as the cause of a power outage in Tauranga's central business district.

Power was cut to 185 customers in central Tauranga at 9.15am, says a Powerco spokesperson.

'Field crews were dispatched to site after reports that a bird had flown into lines.”

Power was estimated to be restored around 1.56pm, but contractors have managed to get it back on sooner.

'Power was restored at 10.20am.

'Powerco thanks Tauranga customers for their patience as crews work to restore power.”

The most up-to-date outage information can be found on Powerco's outages webpage here: powerco.co.nz/outages

2 comments

Toasted bird

Posted on 11-10-2022 12:54 | By CliftonGuy

Anybody have this bird for supper?


Third World reticulation.

Posted on 13-10-2022 11:28 | By morepork

The fact that a seagull hittling the lines, or a drunken fool hitting a power pole can deprive an entire community of electricity for significant time, simply refelects the lack of investment by power companies into our reticulation. The whole point of a network is that it has redundancy in it, and power can be re-routed when a node goes down. (Modern control systems can do this automatically, in milliseconds.) But our power companies just keep creaming profits and NOT investing in the necessary infrastructure. I have spent time in third world countries with much more reliable power supply than we experience. How many times do we see a power outage reported on Sunlive? Check your power bill and see what you are paying for this abysmal lack of investment...


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