Trees falling on lines caused more than 85% of the power outages from last month’s wind event in the South and the lines industry — which spends $67 million a year annually on the issue — says it is time for a change.
PowerNet had 25,000 disconnections in the immediate aftermath of the wind event on October 23 and worked hard to get the power back on in about two weeks.
The company said wind had a huge impact on its network and falling trees were to blame.
"This was an extraordinary wind event that had huge impacts on our network. The proximity of large trees to our power lines played a major part in the damage done," a PowerNet spokeswoman said.
"We would welcome a review of the current legislation around trees, particularly within the fall zone, to protect our network and our customers from such severe damage as a result of future weather events."
Electricity Networks Aotearoa chief executive Tracey Kai said the damage from trees to lines in the recent wind event in the South was severe.
"With the outages in the South Island, they’re still doing a tally, but they reckon it’s about 85% to 95% of the outages were due to trees."
She said some of the pictures showed some of "the trees have really attacked the lines".
"You know, we’re not going to be able to prevent all of them but it would be good if we could get it under at least 50%."
She said when a storm event happened and people lost power, the focus switched to fixing trees and reducing the incidents.
"The current Energy Minister, but also Mark Mitchell, the Minister of Civil Defence, has said, you know, we do need to do more around this. So they’re saying the right things, but we’re just not seeing it happen.
"People jump up and down because they can’t make a cup of tea or have a hot shower or flush the loo. And then, you know, we restore the power and then we move on to the next problem."
Tree owners fell into two categories. There were those who just did not realise trees interfered with power lines — she called them mum and dad owners.
Then there were commercial forest owners and councils, which were better educated, aware of the trees and needed to do more.
"The guys who are commercial, I would like to see a more clearer and fairer cost allocation to them and doing a better job because that’s the bulk of it. The line companies can go and look after the mum and dad trees.
"Forestry in particular make money off these trees. But there are still a lot of forestry trees knocking down power lines.
"I think it takes some courage to ask forestry owners and councils to take on that cost because they’ll kick off because they won’t want to wear that. I don’t know many industries where you can create a hazard and then leave it to someone else to look after."
Government regulations needed to be improved and toughened up. The lines company did the first trim of trees for free, which gave no incentive for the owner to do it, Ms Kai said.
The government proposed changes to the rules around trees and lines in April this year but the industry was still waiting for them and they would take up to two years to come into effect.
"Something’s better than nothing, but they don’t go far enough.
"It’s costing the industry a lot of money. We spent $67m maintaining trees last year. We don’t own any trees. And those are costs. I think the important thing to know is those are costs that get passed on to electricity consumers.
"So if you want your power bill to go down, if we can do better with our tree regulations that will save money for sure."
She was not confident the government changes would come through and solve the problems.
One of the changes proposed was a lines company being able to rip trees out which were likely to later interfere with lines. But the cost would be borne by the lines company to rip up the trees, she said.
Putting lines underground was about 40% more expensive and much of New Zealand had an earthquake risk, which created more problems.
