Wellington power cuts

Central Wellington has been very disrupted the last 2 afternoons in a row by 2 long power outages. No-one seems to know why. I listened intently to the news this morning and in local news they did say something (I improvise):

Wellington CBD had its second major power outage yesterday afternoon following on from one on Monday afternoon. Many shops and offices were forced to close and send staff home. Someoneorother from NZ Girl on Customhouse Quay said that they lost thousands of dollars in revenue over the two days. “We had to close our shop and send our staff home when it became apparent the power was going to be off for a few hours. We rely on a lot of foot traffic around lunchtime and after work and because the surrounding offices and shops shut there was just no-one around”.” –end

HUH? What kind of news story is that? WHY where there outages? WHAT caused them? ARE there going to be anymore? WHEN will we feel confident that things are back to normal? WHERE is the spokesperson from the power company?

I did see this piece on stuff.co.nz this morning which kind of explains it but it was really just a summary of who was affected and how long it took to get the power back on.

She said the two power cuts occurred during an upgrade of Vector’s Wellington network but were not caused by the same thing. They were the result of different cable faults at different locations.