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Fire safety investigators probe cause of Auckland substation power outage

Monday 6th October 2014

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Fire safety investigators are at the site of the big power outage in Auckland today looking into the cause of the blaze that cut power to around 85,000 businesses and households over the weekend.

Lines company Vector said work is progressing well on the fire-damaged cables at the Penrose substation with all available crews working on repairing and reinstating them and it hopes to have power restored to everyone by 5am tomorrow. Customers in restored areas are also being asked to conserve power as much as possible so Vector can back feed more areas.

Assistant Area Fire Commander Dave Woon said it could take up to two weeks to report on the cause of the blaze which took four hours to bring under control in the early hours of Sunday morning.  It was one of the more difficult blazes the Fire Service has had to work on, particularly as firefighters had to wait around an hour to ensure the power at the major substation was completely isolated and they would be safe to approach the trench. 

By that time oil pressure pumped into the cables had seeped throughout the trench, fanning the flames and causing an intense heat to build up.  Foam was used to knock back the flames so firefighters could access the 1.5 metre deep trench but Woon said it then took some time to remove heavy concrete tiles covering the cables before a heavier foam could be used to suffocate the flames.

"It was dark and smoky and that was a hard job.  I had 35 people there working with the foam and tiles and this was a very technical job, not something we do every day. But we had a good outcome," he said.

The substation is owned and managed by state-owned Transpower which transfers the electricity on high-powered lines before lines company Vector then distributes it from the substation on its own cables throughout the suburbs.

Transpower spokesman Geoff Wishart said the cables were sitting above ground rather than being completely buried as they would at other substations around the country because the volcanic earth in that area affects the rating on the cable when buried - meaning less power gets through. He denied the problem was related to the age of the substation which he likened to George Washington's axe.  "How many handles and how many heads can you replace on the axe before it is no longer George Washington's axe? This substation has had a lot of replacements in recent years."

There has been around $20 million spent on upgrading the substation, as part of a wider investment to improve security of power supply in Auckland. The $473 million North Auckland and Northland project which came into commercial operation in February provided a new 220kv cable from Pakuranga to Albany supported by two new substations at Wairau Road and Hobson Street.

The work gave an alternative route to move power through and around Auckland rather than relying on the single transmission line between Otahuhu and Henderson. Wishart said the current power outage from the substation fire would have been much worse and would have cut power to Auckland's central business district without the new cable.

Energy analyst Bryan Leyland said one of the key learnings from the substation outage was the need for better fire protection at substations across the national grid. Leyland said the outage highlighted something that was not looked at sufficiently by Transpower. “Cable fires are dangerous and people don’t take the possibility of them sufficiently seriously because they are very unusual,” he said.

Wishart said it was still not clear what caused the blaze and Transpower would investigate whether it needed to do anything differently in future around fire protection. Prime Minister John Key said there would be an independent inquiry into the blaze.

Fletcher Building, the country's biggest listed company, said its manufacturing and distribution facilities in east Auckland were disrupted by the fire, and is working with customers to minimise the impact. It doesn't expect the fire will have material impact on its 2015 earnings.

 

 

 

 

BusinessDesk.co.nz



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