Street lighting failure unlikely to be linked to earlier events: Delta

An investigation is continuing into yet another street light outage in Dunedin, but Delta staff insist there is no systemic problem with the network.

Lights across parts of the city had failed to fire again on Friday night - the fifth outage since late last year - until they were switched on manually about an hour later.

Delta asset management general manager Derek Todd said the company took the reliability of street lighting ''very seriously'' and the outage was regretted.

The cause was still being investigated, but a preliminary assessment suggested a fault in the interaction between old and new signalling equipment used to activate the lights, he said.

Aurora Energy, which contracted Delta to maintain its lines network, had since 2010 been ''investing significantly'' in modernising the city's street lighting control systems, which would improve reliability in future.

The system's manufacturer was also involved in the investigation, and, in the meantime, Delta staff were taking ''immediate measures'', including systems adjustments and manual checks, ''to reduce the potential for a recurrence'', he said.

The latest outage meant the activation of street lights was delayed by about one hour in parts of Dunedin's CBD, South Dunedin, St Kilda, St Clair, Corstorphine, Andersons Bay and on Otago Peninsula as far as Macandrew Bay.

''In all other parts of the city, street lights turned on automatically, as scheduled,'' Mr Todd said.

The preliminary investigation suggested Friday night's delay was unrelated to previous faults, on September 16 and 24, October 20 and November 4 last year, he said.

The detailed investigation of the latest outage was expected to be finished later this week.

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