South City Power Outage Cause Found

If you notice anything odd with your power supply, call us.

That’s the message from PowerNet in the follow up to a power surge that affected parts of South Invercargill late last month.

The outage occurred on Sunday 20 September and affected 97 customers in the Kew/Kingswell areas, causing household appliances to overload.

An investigation by PowerNet determined the cause was the failure of an overhead neutral connector, these types of events are not common and very difficult to identify.

PowerNet and it’s insurance company came to the party in replacing dozens of electrical appliances that were damaged due to the power surge.

In a statement a spokesperson for PowerNet says after the power surge a customer mentioned they noticed flickering lights in the days prior to the fault but did not contact our System Control. Our System Control team may have been able to identify the fault if the flickering lights had been reported.

This is a good reminder for customers to immediately contact PowerNet’s System Control on 0800 808 587 if they notice flickering lights or appliances.