Last updated: 19 Dec 2024
What is happening?
On February 14, 2023, Cyclone Gabrielle caused widespread damage across Hawke’s Bay, destroying hundreds of homes and causing power outages. Most of Hawke’s Bay’s electricity is provided via interconnection at our Redclyffe grid exit point. Redclyffe and Whirinaki substations were both flooded and the flood waters at Redclyffe triggered power outages at Redclyffe, Fernhill, Tuai and Whakatu.
This natural disaster caused the greatest loss of power supply the region has experienced.
Transpower and Unison, the local electricity distributor, have reviewed the need for resilient infrastructure so that people and business in Hawke’s Bay can have a greater level of assurance that another major flood event will not cause a similar power outage.
Our focus is now on rebuilding the substation with increased resiliency.
We have been undertaking detailed research of the ground the substation is on. We have discovered that more work is going to be needed to make the foundations of the substation strong enough to handle earthquakes while also keeping our equipment above flood level. This stage has taken longer than we had expected.
Because the ground is going to need additional work, this project will unfortunately cost more and take longer than we originally anticipated. A project of this size requires Transpower to ask the Commerce Commission to consider our plan, approve it, and agree to how much it will cost. The role of the Commerce Commission is to ensure that those who benefit are getting good value from the investment.
The next stage is for a new engineering plan to be confirmed, once this has been completed Transpower will provide more information to the community and ask for feedback. This will happen in early 2025. Once we have heard back from the community, the next step will be for us to apply to the Commerce Commission to consider our plan. Our intention is to do this by June 2025.
All things going well, we would expect to hear back from the Commerce Commission by October 2025. The plan is for work to start on the rebuild later in 2025.
What work has happened so far?
- The 110 kV switchyard has had interim upgrades performed to make the equipment there more resilient to flooding.
- We have installed a new temporary control room above the flood level to ensure that most critical control equipment is flood resilient.
- A new 220 kV/110 kV interconnecting transformer has arrived on site and will be installed before next winter. The new transformer is bigger which means we will be able to supply more electricity into the area and will meet 1 in 450-year flood protection standards.
Find out more
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Latest news
Media releases
Transpower to consult on rebuilding Redclyffe substation on existing site - 9 May, 2024
Transpower completes further work to improve electricity supply security in cyclone-affected regions - 31 March, 2023
Transpower completes partial restoration of damaged Redclyffe substation - 13 March, 2023
Transpower completes bypass of Redclyffe substation - 17 February, 2023
Transpower continues to work with lines companies to restore power in the Hawke's Bay and Tairāwhiti regions - 16 February, 2023