Castle St resident Reece said he was confused and annoyed about the news of a power outage scheduled for Thursday next week.
The planned outage will go ahead despite the fact that many students will be sick with Covid-19 or isolating.
The outage would interfere with "normal stuff" like charging computers at a time when most students would be starting their first week of online classes, he said.
A spokeswoman for Aurora Energy said the company was undertaking a major programme of work to upgrade the electricity network.
The jobs scheduled for next week in Dunedin Central have been planned for a number of months and need to take place as scheduled.
While the company was aware that planned power outages were "inconvenient" for customers, they were necessary to keep staff, contractors and the public safe while work was carried out.
Aurora appreciated that some customers, including students, would be self-isolating due to Covid-19. Their patience was appreciated.
Two poles are scheduled to be replaced.
On Wednesday, 52 customers on George St, Albany St and Queen St are scheduled to have power outages between 9am and 5pm.
On Thursday, 65 customers are expected to be affected on Cumberland St, Ellis St, Howe St and Castle St between 8am and 3.30pm, she said.
