Aucklanders face 1100-year wait to scrap overhead power lines

Tuesday, 31 July 2018

Auckland lines company Vector forecasts climate change will increase the risk of power outages from high winds, floods and dry winters.

But it will take 1100 years to replace all its overhead power lines in and around Auckland with underground lines, at the pace the electricity lines company is currently proposing.

The wait would be double the time it took for the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, from its first emperor Augustus to the capitulation of Rome to the Goths in 476.

The argument over 'undergrounding' power lines boiled over in April when a powerful storm brought down power lines in the city, leaving about 5000 people without electricity for at least three days, but the debate has a long history.

* Why did this storm cause so much electricity havoc?

* Aucklanders still waiting for power lines to go underground after two decades**

Vector will spend only $5m a year over the next 10 years putting power lines underground, according to a projection agreed with majority owner Entrust.

John Collinge, who chaired the Auckland Electricity Power Board in the 1980s before it became Vector, recalled that in 1984 it promised to underground all the power lines in the city within 40 years.

That commitment was dumped in 1991 when the board was scrapped and the network was being prepared for privatisation, he said.

Now Vector is defending the lower priority it is giving to burying existing power lines, saying the cost – which averages $10,000 to $15,000 per property – is not always the best bang for the buck.

Although it has been widely understood that Vector spends $10.5 million a year on undergrounding, some of that cash has in fact gone on other technologies to improve network resilience, including more distributed power storage and generation.

Over the past three years, Vector has spent an average of only $5.5m a year on undergrounding.

Illuminating the Auckland Harbour bridge cost $10m but Albert-Eden local board deputy chairman Glenda Fryer argues it was the wrong priority.

Vector spokeswoman Elissa Downey says spending will trend upwards as a result of some joint initiatives that will be announced with phone network company Chorus in the next few weeks.

But an agreement between Vector and its majority owner, community trust Entrust, projects Vector will spend only $5m a year on average putting overhead power lines underground over the next 10 years.

That is half the sum Vector spent last year rigging up the Auckland Harbour Bridge with solar lights so that it could be illuminated on special occasions.

Albert-Eden local board deputy chairman Glenda Fryer, a former city councillor, said she believed the latest commitment was for Vector to spend $10.5m a year on undergrounding and she felt 'totally misled'.

She argues Vector has got its priorities wrong illuminating the Harbour bridge.

'Some things are nice to have, but I would put security of the electricity supply ahead of that.'

April's storm exposed the risk to Auckland's electricity network posed by wild weather and climate change.

Collinge dismissed Vector's projected $5m annual spend as 'just a silly little token to say they have done something'.

'They have never had the gumption to do anything serious, much to my disappointment.

'I think it is a terribly retrograde step. Apart from the safety aspects, the aesthetic aspects of undergrounding make a huge difference to the community,' he lamented.

Vector chief networks operator Andre Botha said it would cost $3.6 billion to bury all its lines in urban Auckland and another $1.9b to 'underground' its lines in rural areas around the city.

Those were conservative estimates and did not include the cost of relocating other services that hung off power lines, such as fibre-optic cables used to deliver ultrafast broadband, he said.

Former Auckland Electricity Power Board chairman John Collinge says Vector is spending 'peanuts'.

Based on those estimates, at the proposed rate of investment, undergrounding would be completed in about the year 3118.

Auckland is faring well compared with the rest of the country – with 55 per cent of power lines underground compared to a national average of only 27 per cent – as well as with Australia, Botha said.

'Gold-plating' the network by putting it all underground could increase the risks associated with flooding, volcanic activity and earthquakes, he said.

'Undergrounding isn't always the right option. When something does go wrong, it's harder to fix.'

Fryer said she did not consider that a good argument given Auckland was not on a fault line and the risks posed by volcanoes and earthquakes was low compared to storms.

Nature encroaches on a leaning power on Military Track in Wellington, where just over 60 per cent of lines have been buried.

'When I was on the council we got some research done about earthquakes and the evidence was they might be expected to cause one person's death in Auckland every 10,000 years.'

Instead, she argues it comes down to money, and the decision to float a quarter of Vector's shares on the NZX meant sharemarket investors in Vector now had a lot more say.

'Undergrounding has been constrained by private investors in Vector.'

Downey acknowledged the company was putting power lines underground 'as a matter of course' in new subdivisions, which might appear to give the lie to any suggestion that cost is not in fact the major consideration.

The price per home of putting new lines underground is between four and 10 times less than the cost of burying existing overhead lines, the company estimates.

The frequency with which vehicles crash into power lines is another reason to put infrastructure underground, Collinge argues.

The cost and disruption involved is highest in parts of the city built on volcanic rock and on fill, where underground drills won't work and open trenches are required.

If undergrounding does indeed come down to money, the question may be how much Aucklanders are willing to pay.

Vector would need approval from regulators to spend more on undergrounding, and 'significantly' speeding up the work could quadruple Aucklanders' lines charges leaving each household $1400 a year worse off, Botha said.

Electricity Network Association (ENA) chief executive Graeme Peters said it didn't have information on how much its other 26 members were investing in undergrounding.

But Vector was in fourth place nationwide among the country's 27 lines companies when it came to the proportion of its network that was underground, he said.

If Aucklanders wanted to pay $5.5b to put all the remaining lines in the city underground 'then it should be done, but I am guessing they don't', he said.

Peters, who is based in Wellington, argues the scrutiny Vector is under is partly down to the fact that much of the country's media is based there.

Auckland's April storm generated one massive 210kmph gust but the city was not unusually prone to storm damage, he said.

Across the country, 'storms that cause significant damage to lines actually happen just about every month', Peters said.

Both he and Vector argue that undergrounding isn't getting any easier in practice now that power poles are increasingly being used to carry fibre-optic cables for ultrafast broadband, in addition to other services such as street lights and even road signs.

Fryer said she wasn't in a position to say whether the $5.5b cost estimate was realistic or inflated.

That was partly why she was continuing to call for Auckland Mayor Phil Goff to form a working party including Vector, Chorus and other utilities to investigate the issue and chart a better way forward, she said.

If undergrounding is deemed too costly and climate change will make storms more common, are lengthy power outages just something Aucklanders will have to get more used to?

It may not seem a perfect solution, but Botha said the risk to overhead powerlines could be reduced if the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) did more to address the problems caused by trees growing close to power lines.

About two-thirds of storm-related power outages were due to trees falling on lines, but Vector could only trim them if they were almost touching, he said.

Home-owners and councils should instead consider removing fast-growing trees that were near power lines, and trees that towered over them, he suggested.

'The Electricity Network Association has been consistently asking MBIE to address the vegetation issues and this has been on their work programme now for approximately three years, but nothing has commenced to date,' he said.

'Unfortunately, 'risk' is not considered under the tree regulations, only 'distance'.'

An MBIE spokesman confirmed it had decided in 2015 that it would investigate the effectiveness of the existing regulations some time between 2017 and 2019.

'The investigation has not yet commenced and will be scheduled subject to other priorities,' he said.

'We understand the electricity lines sector has been compiling evidence about the impact of trees on the reliability of their services, which will be useful to the investigation.'

Fryer thought the issue was a distraction.

'Trees are a part of the issue, but I don't think chopping down all the trees in Auckland is going to make our streets look any more attractive.

'There is no way any government regulation is going to allow Auckland's very old and beloved trees to be cut down. That is why undergrounding was the solution.'

Collinge recalled the Auckland Electricity Power Board used to have a scheme under which local residents in areas such as Mt Albert had been able to chip in to part-pay for undergrounding, to speed it up.

That had also been tried in parts of Dunedin, he said.

'The difficulty has always been you get 80 per cent of people wanting it and the rest either can't or don't want to pay.

'So there is always somebody who has got to be 'subsidised' by others in their street.'