In March last year the firm agreed a customised price-quality path (CPP) with the Commerce Commission which allowed Aurora to recover $563 million from its customers to fund the work.
The commission said the upgrade programme was much needed and without it the Aurora network would have continued to deteriorate, safety incidents would have increased, and customers would experience more and longer outages.
Aurora Energy chief executive Dr Richard Fletcher said the firm had made significant progress on asset renewal and maintenance work in the past year.
"We invested $127 million across Dunedin, Central Otago-Wanaka and Queenstown Lakes, $81 million on network-related capital expenditure and $46 million on operational expenditure such as routine inspections and maintenance, vegetation management, systems operation and network support."
Staff had replaced more than 1400 power poles, upgraded 74km of high voltage lines, and inspected about 12,000 of the 53,674 poles in the Aurora network, Dr Fletcher said.
They had also completed scheduled maintenance at nine of 39 zone sub-stations, inspected vegetation on 51% of the network and maintained vegetation on a quarter of it.
Aurora is holding public meetings this month to discuss upgrade work.
By: Staff reporter
