Wellington Power Cut

Tried to get onto Stuff.co.nz today for your news fix and been left hanging with an error page?

Stuff.co.nz was one of the 14,000 Wellington Transpower customers which lost power this morning, also cutting internet connections by the failure of parts of CityLink’s high-speed telecommunication network.

Many businesses throughout the Wellington CBD and Northern suburbs lost power just before midday today – a power cut which also affected New Zealand Government agencies such as the Wellington District Court and several parts of Parliament. The power was restored just 17 minutes later, but internet connection problems remained throughout the afternoon.

The powercut occurred as one of the transformers of the Wilton substation tripped, which took out 70 megawatts of load.

Image from Flickr.