- Power was restored after a duck caused damage by flying into power lines
- Initial reports mistakenly believed the outage was due to a fallen power pole
- PowerNet teams worked quickly to restore power across Invercargill and surrounding areas
PowerNet has confirmed that power has been fully restored after a surprising cause was uncovered behind a major outage. Initially believed to be caused by a downed power pole, the disruption was actually triggered by a duck flying into power lines.
The incident caused power cuts in Invercargill and nearby areas, including Otatara, beginning around 9.30am. Early assumptions pointed to a fallen pole near the recycling centre as the reason, with many businesses and residents in the CBD and beyond affected.
Crews restored power temporarily around 10.15am, but a second fault caused further issues. After further investigations and repair work, full service was finally restored by about 1.30pm.
PowerNet noted that their teams were actively working throughout the day to investigate and fix the issues. Due to the fast-changing situation, they could not confirm how many customers were affected during the ongoing outages.
While the disruption caused significant inconvenience across the network, PowerNet’s teams acted quickly to resolve the problem and restore power to all impacted customers.