Bit of a mission finding out about the power outages at Piha that have been going on all day (6 April).

Generator by Piha Store

Went online and looked at Vector website which said for Waitakere, contact your retailer.

Went online to retailer – Genesis – it gave for its contact a 8am-8pm Monday-Friday number!

Rang Genesis number in the phone book and learned that there are “interruption outages” cause unknown at Anawhata, Henderson Valley, Karekare and Piha.

Not all Piha, as my own power is on.

At 4pm Genesis said they expected to get power back on 5 pm.

At 6.30 pm Genesis said the fault had been found at 4.15 pm and power was expected back on at 7 pm.

Rang again at 1o.30 pm as power clearly not on. Now again says the cause is unknown and the revised time for resumption of services is 11 pm.

Vector website has gone from saying it was none of its business, to now saying the fault was reported at 10.56 am and restoration time is 11 pm. We will see.

My understanding power went off from 8 am so it seems very strange Vector only knew about it 3 hours later.

Well, that was a promise too far! Through Saturday, we had power, seems only part of Piha affected. During dinner, we lost power, and had to go get the big battery-powered lamp we keep for this purpose.

Light soon back on and at bed time ours was still on but we could see that much of Piha was black.

Power on and off through the night, then early this morning they brought in a generator. Remember when we had a previous spate of black-outs they promised this, but it has been very slow to arrive this time.

By 9 am power was off again, this time I’m told it was because the generator had run out of deisel!

By just after 10 it was on again.

Rang at 2.40pm for an update. Advised that in 5 minutes, they were switching from generator to network supply, and if no power on by 3.30 pm to ring and log a fault.

I was told the cause of the original problem was “failure in generator”.

Newer houses will have been affected by this more than folks like us, who have water and wastewater systems that don’t rely on power. And, due to experience, we have a little gas canister camping cooker, and a BBQ that needs only charcoal or wood.

It would be prudent to have a small roofwater tank for water in these situations, separate from the main system. A tap and a bucket is better than no water at all.

Of course, freezer food for many will have had it. People are advised to ring customer service on Monday to see what they are offering in the way of discounts or compensation for ruined food.