Support the sponsor!

But that's not news is it?

Sure, the structure of the NZ power grid, especially the bits around Auckland, is old and lacks redundancy -- but what can we do?

There's bugger-all (if any) power generation capability North of Auckland so the region is stuck with having to rely on a very limited amount of local generation capacity and lines that come from the South.

Now have your say Got something to say about today's column, or want to see what others think?  Visit The Forums While you're here, why not visit the Aardvark Hall of Shame and perhaps make your own nomination. 7

In previous columns I've suggested that the option of using low-head tidal power within the Auckland harbours to generate more power "on the spot", so to speak - but it appears that this is a non-starter, possibly for political and environmental reasons rather than practical ones.

So was yesterday's outage unavoidable?

Hell no it wasn't.

From what has been described and shown on TV, it appears as if an overhead earth cable (used primary to shield the HV lines from lightning strikes) had frayed and then fallen onto switchgear or other HV lines.

Surely this is nothing more than poor preventive maintenance?

If these wires are blown around by the wind (as they obviously are) then there's no doubt that they will fatigue, fray and fail. In this case, it appears as if there is an inadequate inspection or replacement strategy in place for preventing failures such as the one experienced yesterday.

So who's to blame?

Was it some scruffy guy in overalls who simply neglected to carry out the prescribed maintenance procedures?

Was it the engineers responsible for drawing up the maintenance schedules?

Or was it a succession of greedy governments who have demanded excessive dividends from the SOE responsible for operating, maintaining and managing our transmission system.

Quite frankly, I don't know for sure -- but I know where I'd put my money if I were a betting man.

Isn't it about time that tax collected from fuel sales was put back into maintaining and improving our roading system? Isn't it about time that huge dividends from TransPower were put back into maintaining and upgrading our national grid?

Kiwis are now taxed more heavily than they have been in nearly 20 years (especially once you factor in all those fees, levies, surcharges and SOE dividends) yet we're seeing the rapid decay of essential services such as roading, power, health and education.

Of course you'd expect this if our population was exploding and we were in a phase of exceptional growth - but it isn't and we aren't.

Ultimately therefore, if the government is taking more money per capita than ever before yet achieving less with it, the problem must be poor management at the very highest levels.

But back to the more technical issues...

Okay so your power goes out -- that's not such a big deal really.

For less than $2K you can buy yourself a cheap but satisfactory 2KW-3KW generator in anticipation of such events. This will run your fridge and/or freezer for a couple of hours a day, keep your lights glowing, your TV running and your computer working -- but not much more.

Heating and cooking can be done with gas, liquid or solid-fuel heaters (all of which are actually cheaper than electricity anyway) so you need not die of exposure even in mid-winter.

But what happens when your internet connection also goes down (oh the humanity!)?

During yesterday's outage, we had a brief blip here and my DSL connection was lost. When the modem re-established a connection, just a couple of minutes later, the Telecom authentication system was down so I could not establish a PPP session. This situation lasted for about 30 minutes.

So what happened to Telecom's systems? Didn't they have a UPS and standby generator? Didn't they learn anything about redundancy from the outage last month?

If suitable levels of backup power were in effect, the DSL network should have remained completely unaffected by this outage -- at least in the short term. The fact that DSL was lost for half an hour or so means that it's not just TransPower who need to look closely at their systems and their ability to provide continuity of service.

How did your internet connectivity hold up?

Tell us all, and see what others have to say in The Aardvark Forums

If you feel that this is a good thing and/or you hold a "geniune affection" for yours truly -- then you are welcome to gift me some money using the buttons provided. In gifting this money you accept that no goods, service or other consideration is offered, provided, accepted or anticipated in return. Just click on the button to gift whatever you can afford. NOTE: PayPal bills in US dollars so don't accidentally gift more than what you were intending :-)

Contacting Aardvark
I'm always happy to hear from readers, whether they're delivering brickbats, bouquets or news tip-offs. If you'd like to contact me directly, please this form. If you're happy for me to republish your comments then please be sure and select For Publication.

Other media organisations seeking more information or republication rights are also invited to contact me.

Just add a couple of lines of JavaScript to your pages and you can get a free summary of Aardvark's daily commentary -- automatically updated each and every week-day.

Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using the RSS format. More details can be found here.

Contact me if you decide to use either of these feeds and have any problems.

Linking Policy
Want to link to this site? Check out Aardvark's Linking Policy.

Did you tell someone else about Aardvark today? If not then do it now!