The power outage in Oamaru at the weekend was caused by water damage to the 11,000-volt switch in Wansbeck St.
Network Waitaki network manager David Paterson said ‘‘some of the insulation'' of the switch had sustained damage and was cracked.
‘‘Due to the large amount of rainfall we've had lately, water has got into somewhere ... [in] those cracks or such and shorted [the switch] out.''
The outage on Sunday affected 1000 customers on South Hill for about 40 minutes.
