Two weeks ago, power outage lasted more than 50 hours or nearly three days for the north eastern side of the island. Power was out for around 5 hours for the southern side.
The staff of Niue Power worked throughout those two days, discovered that the faulty cables tripped the northern feeder and caused the outage to the whole island from the new power station.
To avoid island wide power outages the team decided to go back to using the old power station while work continues to stabilize the grid.
The Director of the Department of Utilities-Clinton Chapman sat down with BCN News to explain the reasons for the power outage two weeks ago.
People took to social media last week complaining about the on-going power outages. Questions were raised over the continuous power disruptions and one question whether it is time to bring in support from New Zealand seemed to have greatly upset the staff of Niue Power.
The public’s frustrations are well noted given how long it has taken with millions of dollars gone into trying to rectify the power issues on the island.
There have been several reviews and reports over many years. In 2021 the government commissioned a review of Niue power and that report provided many recommendations to address the issues with power generation. Earlier this year a parliamentary select committee also investigated the continuous power outages and capacity concerns of Niue power.
Today Director Chapman confirmed that staffing capacity is an issue for the department
Chapman says that while there are capacity issues, there is an improvement now to the production side.
The issues now are with the reticulation side which involves a considerable amount of asset maintenance and replacement.
There is also an ADB funded engineer working on power grid stabilization
In the meantime, the department will progress with the government’s energy strategic plan which sets the target of 80 percent renewable energy by next year which is where the 20 million dollar NZ renewable energy project announced earlier this year will come in.
For Clinton Chapman and the Niue Power team they are not asking for power conservation because they have the production capacity but he explained the immediate plans going forward.
Chapman told BCN News that they are always looking for workers because while some of their staff are experienced and well qualified, there is a gap between them and the very junior staff.
They are also working on sending staff to train with NZ based power companies and also short term training in Japan.