Power outages in New Zealand

Your lines company, not the power company that bills you. The lines company is the business that owns the poles and wires in your area. There are 39 network reporting regions in New Zealand run by 29 lines companies, and which one is yours is set by your address. Find your area below for the number. If you can see a downed line, sparking, or anything on fire, call 111 first and stay at least 10 metres away. Treat every fallen line as live.

Because retailing and distribution were split apart in the New Zealand electricity market. Your retailer buys electricity wholesale and sells it to you; the lines company delivers it and maintains the network. When there is a fault, only the lines company can send a crew. Retailers will take the report, but they just pass it on, so calling the network directly saves a step.

Check your main switch and your RCD at the switchboard first, then look outside. If your neighbours have power and streetlights are on, the fault is probably on your side of the connection and you need a registered electrician, not the lines company. If the street is dark too, it is a network outage and worth reporting.

This page does not show live outages. For what is out right now and when power is due back, use the distributor's own outage map or call their faults line. We link to every distributor's own map where they publish one, because that is the source that is actually current. A page that cached an outage status would be wrong within minutes, and being wrong about whether your power is coming back is worse than being silent.

Sometimes. Lines companies operate under reliability standards set by the Commerce Commission, and several have their own guaranteed service level payments for outages beyond a stated duration, but the terms differ by network and most require you to claim rather than paying automatically. Ask your lines company what their guaranteed service levels are; that is the phrase that gets a useful answer.

Switch off or unplug sensitive appliances — computers, TVs, heat pumps — because the surge when supply is restored is what usually damages them. Leave one light switched on so you can tell when the power is back. If you rely on mains electricity for medical equipment, tell your retailer now rather than during an outage: medically dependent consumers are registered with the network and treated as a priority.