We hope these tips help you smoothly transition back to your daily routine after a power outage.
Outage Hub
Outage Hub
UPDATE Tuesday 30 December 4:35pm
With the strong winds continuing today, we’ve had over 600 more outages reported across the region. Our construction crews have been out since early this morning working on the large area outages to restore power where it will help the most customers first.
We’ve seen a large amount of fallen trees and debris across the network, and our crews are working incredibly hard to access some locations safely so repairs can begin. Strong winds and fallen trees have caused significant damage to powerlines and equipment. Please stay well clear of any fallen or damaged lines and treat all lines as live.
Our teams have made good progress on some of the larger faults, though many still remain. There are also hundreds of individual outages that we’ll be able to attend only after the major areas are restored.
We’re closely monitoring the weather, and with more bad weather expected tomorrow, some customers may still be without power for another 3–5 days due to the significant damage across the network. We know how challenging this is, so please plan ahead and prepare for delays in restoration.
Customers on private service lines are encouraged to use approved contractors. For more information, please visit Service providers – Counties Energy. In extreme situations such as this, our crews ‘make safe’ first—isolating power to any damaged or downed lines before moving on to restoration.
Important: If you are in an affected area, please make alternative plans now—such as staying with friends or family—given the possibility of being without power for several more days.
Report faults immediately:
- Call 0800 100 202
- In an emergency, dial 111
Our crews are working as safely and quickly as possible, and we understand that this is difficult, and frustrating, especially over the New Year period. We appreciate your patience as we restore power.
What does Counties Energy do in a storm?
We prioritise the restoration of power to critical infrastructure such as hospitals, water plants and sewage plants. Its usually not possible to provide estimated times when power is restored for your property or business because we are simultaneously assessing the type of damage across the entire network (from South Auckland to the top of the Waikato), carrying out repairs, organising specialists arborists to remove trees from powerlines, or waiting on traffic management to be put in place to isolate key roads.
During a storm, specialists such as arborists and traffic controllers can be in short supply as they will be in high demand with other lines companies who are also trying to restore their customers as quickly as possible.
The following outlines how we prioritise power restoration in a storm:
- We prioritise repairs to high voltage lines that will restore the power to as many customers as possible.
- Next, we repair low voltage lines to individual homes and businesses.
- Lastly, we will assess and fix individual faults, but only once the majority of customers have had their power restored.
Why has the outage that I reported on the Outage Hub disappeared from the map?
Counties Energy will combine individual outages reported into a larger outage on the Outage hub to show the area affected on our map. During a storm, this helps customers to see the extent of the outages across the network so that they can make alternative arrangements such as staying with family or friends in a different suburb that has power.
When an individual report is connected to a larger one, our crews are able to assess the severity of the outage in question and to account for all affected customers when restoring power.
Why didn’t the Counties Energy ute near my place stop in to have a look at my fault? I saw the guy up a ladder on a pole but he left soon after and a number of us are still without power.
When a storm or large outage occurs, the people first out in the field are our first responders. Their job is to assess damage and to make damaged equipment safe, and to feed this information back to our support teams in Head Office who are co-ordinating and dispatching repair crews.
Once the type of damage has been identified, a repair crew will gather the right equipment and parts (e.g. poles or transformers) from our warehouse and head out to the fault site to carry out repairs. The line mechanic you saw up the ladder on a pole was most likely our first responder who was up identifying what caused the fault to occur and making it safe.
In the dark?
If you have an outage affecting you, below are some easy steps to reporting an outage using the Outage Hub
1
Through the navigation click on “Report” where a pop up window will appear to start the reporting journey.
2
Fill in all the details about the outage affecting you to help assist our team better. The team will work in with our crews to help restore power.
3
Once you’ve filled in all the required details and uploaded any necessary information, simply click “submit,” and our team will receive your report promptly.
4
Stay in the loop with the reported fault by enabling notifications to receive timely updates from us!
Note that if the storm has caused damage to your private service line (which is owned by the property owner), you are responsible for organising repairs as soon as possible by contacting one of the approved service providers.