Here’s the power outage story, you wake up in the morning, reach over and check your phone, batteries dead, phone won’t charge. Turn on the lights to start getting ready for your day, the lights seem dim and appear to start flickering. You shuffle to the kitchen to make breakfast. The microwave won’t work and even worse the coffee machine doesn’t want to save you from this bad dream.

You have just experienced a power outage.

Now power outages can be caused by a number of things. Car crashes into a power pole or a Transformer. Bad weather, a storm causing power-lines to have clashed, planned outages; It happens all the time.

So what should you do? This is always a gamble between whether it is your house electrics that need an Electrician like Ultraflex to come over and check it out or it’s a network issue such as power quality, they have put you on a generator to fix something or a straight power cut.

Here are some initial tips on what to first do if it happens:

1: Keep yourself safe! 

2: Check nothing has tripped or operated on your switchboard

3: Is there a read displaying on your smart meter? If not the network power is out.

4. Check if your neighbours have power or if the street lights are out.

5. Visit the PowerCo Faults Website: https://www.powerco.co.nz/about-us/power-cut-information/

Here you can report an urgent fault, check known power cuts and planned outages.

In the Tauranga area we are under the “PowerCo” network, they look after all the maintenance for power-lines and the network in general.

6. If you have no joy on this website or can’t access the internet then phone your electricity supplier such as “Trustpower”. You can explain the fault to them and they will lodge a fault to a network company.

If it is not a major recorded outage, power company’s and network providers rely on your feedback and for you to lodge a fault before they will know about it.

If you’re not sure, don’t touch anything and ring your local Electrician straight away. I answer calls all the time for “ghosts” taking over the house or when the lights are out.

We can give advice over the phone or come and do a site visit to assess your electrical system if it is a network fault we can liaise on your behalf to get the issue sorted.

It can be a good idea while experiencing these network issues such as power supply surges, when the lights go dim then bright again, to turn off your “Main switch” this will ensure no damage will be done to your appliances while they are working to fix the fault and take the stress off the line.

So how can you be prepared for a future outage!

Your reading this blog post so this is a very good step 🙂

Quick Tip: Get a Surge Protection device installed in your switchboard, Theses can operate when a nasty electricity spike or surge comes from the network into your property. This device dissipates all the “angry pixies” to earth so it can’t destroy your appliances. Ask us! We can supply and install these in your home for around $250, A great investment for a piece of mind.