Electricity Commission says grid upgrade decision delayed

By NZPA

Tuesday 19th December 2006

The Electricity Commission said today it is delaying a decision on Transpower's proposed power line upgrade into Auckland until early 2007.

The commission, which declined Transpower's initial plan in April, said it expected to release a draft decision at the end of January, instead of at the end of this year as hoped.

"We are still working through a small number of reliability, strategic and competition issues, but felt that it would not be good practice to rush consideration of them to meet an arbitrary decision timeline," said commission deputy chairman, Peter Harris.

Some landowners along the planned route have opposed the building of pylons, although Transpower has been buying land which it intends to sell later.

Transpower plans to build overhead lines from Whakamaru to near South Auckland to handle 40 kilovolts but initially only operate them at 220kv. That delayed spending on transformer equipment.

The proposal -- to cost $683 million, up from $622 million for the original plan -- would also need approval under the Resource Management Act.

Electricity demand is growing at 2.8% a year in Auckland, faster than any other part of the country.

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