Diamond Harbour power network upgrades in progress

1 June 2022 at 7:36 am

Orion has an extensive overhead line maintenance programme underway in Diamond Harbour to improve the reliability of the network servicing this area.

For its crews to do the work safely, the power needs to be turned off to various residents as the work proceeds progressively through the area.

The work involves replacing conductors, insulators, cross arms and putting in new power poles, refurbishing the line delivering power to the area. There are two more planned outages before the work is due to be completed in mid June.

People in Diamond Harbour can keep tabs on which households will be impacted by power cuts and keep up with any changes to the schedule and outage timings by visiting the Outages page on Orion’s website.

Steve Macdonald, Orion General Manager Electricity Network says its website has the most up to date information on planned and unplanned outages on its network.

“This is a complicated project with multiple outages and multiple notices, so it can be hard for people to keep track of what’s happening.

“The work is also weather dependent, so things can change at short notice.”

Macdonald says crews sometimes encounter challenges once underway with the job and this can extend the outage.

“We’ve had customers give us feedback that they need to know if the work is going longer than expected, so they can organise their evening.

“We’ll make sure our Customer Support team and website keep up to date with how the jobs are tracking so we can give people some notice if the timings are expected to go over.

“Customers can also sign-up to our Outage Notification service and they’ll be sent a text the day before a planned outage as a reminder and if things change,” said Macdonald.

The locations and timings for power outages can be found on Orion’s website, www.oriongroup.co.nz, or by calling Orion’s Customer Support team on 0800 363 9898 day or night.