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Monitoring, compliance and enforcement

Authority review into Northland outage

A review into the 20 June 2024 transmission tower failure in Northland after the collapse of a transmission tower cut power to approximately 100,000 consumers in the region.

  • Consumers
  • Compliance

    • Overview

    The Minister for Energy requested under section 18 of the Electricity Industry Act 2010 that the Electricity Authority review and report on the grid emergency event that occurred on 20 June 2024 which resulted in significant power outages in the Northland region.

    The report was published on 25 September 2024.

    It found that nuts securing tower legs to the tower foundations were removed during planned maintenance work causing the tower to fall. This serious error resulted in 88,000 customers losing power and caused significant disruption costing the region tens of millions of dollars.

    The review found that the underlying factors that contributed to the tower’s collapse were entirely avoidable and lessons must be learnt from the event.

    It has provided 26 recommendations to prevent a recurrence. It recommended improvements to processes for maintenance work, grid maintenance contracting arrangements and assurance processes, a review of Omexom’s training and supervision policies and procedures, and measures to improve regional resilience. There are also reporting requirements to track progress of the implementation of the recommendations.

    Timeline

    Past activity

    Project background

    The Minister for Energy requested under section 18 of the Electricity Industry Act 2010 that the Electricity Authority carry out a review into the transmission tower failure in Northland on 20 June 2024.

    The scope of the review is to understand and explain the cause, or causes, of the event, the response to the event and lessons that can be learnt from the event.

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