Lights out in Frankton for Xmas shoppers

Last-minute Christmas shoppers met with closed doors yesterday (Dec 21), as an unplanned outage shut stores across Frankton’s main shopping areas.

Lights went out at 3.24pm and large retailers including the Warehouse Frankton shut during peak Christmas trading. In total, 238 Aurora Energy customers lost power. 

Sian Sutton of Aurora Energy explained the outage was caused by a fault on a high voltage cable, which disrupted the power supply and required immediate replacement.  

“Where possible we will back feed customers from another line, however this was not an option in this instance,” Ms Sutton says.

For some, power was restored at 4.18pm, but more than half waited six hours until the power came back on. For 130 businesses and homes power was restored at 10.59pm

Queenstown Airport was also on the list of affected parties, but a spokesperson says operations weren’t disrupted, because their backup generator instantly kicked in.