Lines company Orion hopes to restore power to about 78 percent of Christchurch customers by the end of the day, and is making good progress on fixing faults to the network after Tuesday's earthquake.
Orion restored 8000 connections today, chief executive Roger Sutton said.
However, there would be small outages to areas already reconnected because the network was so fragile.
Tuesday's magnitude 6.3 earthquake caused significantly more damage to Christchurch's power supply than the initial 7.1 quake in September.
The news was not so good for the remaining 42,000 customers without power in the central city,
Sumner, New Brighton and Dallington, who are still likely to have to wait for several weeks for electricity. Teams are assessing property damage in those areas.
Several large generators due to arrive today and tomorrow will be used in the northern New Brighton and Mt Pleasant/Richmond Hill areas to supply power to infrastructure such as pumping stations.
Australian specialists arrived today to help repair the faults in 66 kilovolt underground cables, and equipment was due to arrive from Germany next week.
There are also about 60 faults in the 11kV cables.
Work will start tomorrow on fixing the 66kV overhead line to supply the New Brighton substation from the Transpower substation at Bromley.
Orion workers are still unable to enter the central city to assess damage.
Christchurch is adequately stocked with fuel, and the BP distribution terminal is open, while supermarkets are stocked and there is enough food, Civil Defence said.
Fifty percent of Christchurch has a basic mains water supply following the earthquake but people are being warned they should still conserve water and boil it before drinking.
People with mains water supply can flush their toilets, but must stop if there are any signs of blockage or overflow as it might be an indication of damaged pipes, Civil Defence said.
Two hundred portable toilets have been distributed and another 600 are on their way.
For people without water, the army has set up a desalination plant processing 2000 litres of water per hour at New Brighton.
Fonterra has also set up five large vats to supply water, and there are smaller water distribution points throughout the city.
Thirty-two roads and 13 bridges around the city remain closed and people were asked to travel only when essential and take extreme caution when driving.
Telecom has 60 generators providing backup power to network sites without mains power and the state of its network has improved. Vodafone said its network remained operational.
More than 20,000 calls had been made from 260 free Telecom payphones across Christchurch.
New Zealand Post will resume partial mail services to earthquake-affected areas from Tuesday. Mail processing is about to resume, while posties will help investigate areas where mail can be picked up from and delivered to from next Tuesday.
Twelve PostShop/Kiwibank stores are open.
