Maintenance work likely cause of mass power outages in South IslandMYTCHALL BRANSGROVE/FAIRFAX NZ According to Orion's website, more than 50,000 properties in Canterbury - including Christchurch, Amberley and Akaroa - had no power on Thursday morning. A power outage affecting over 60,000 homes across the South Island was probably caused by maintenance work. A witness said the crash was because of the power outage. POWER OUT ACROSS THE SOUTHIn Nelson, about 4000 households in Atawhai, Brightwater, Wakefield, Hope, Dovedale, and Tasman village were hit by the power outage. Network Tasman network manager Murray Hendrickson said the fault in the national grid automatically shut some feeder lines in the region when generation did not match the load on the system.

Source: Stuff March 01, 2017 22:40 UTC