Mike's Minute: The ComCom Transpower decision is madness

It's ironic that we mention the Commerce Commission yesterday and here we are today, indulging in a bit more of its madness.

Lines charges, the cost of getting power to your house, is going to get more expensive.

Your bill will rise for the next handful of years by up to $85. That’s over $1,000 a year.

Kerre Woodham: Transpower needs to take responsibility

Mistakes happen. We get that, we've all made them. Some are more serious than others. Some are fixable, some are not. But as old Mr. Martin said in the LV Martin and TV ads, it's the putting right that counts.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Why Transpower's press conference backfired this morning

Well, Transpower has given us a master class in how to look guilty, hasn't it?  

I mean, come on. Who doesn't now think that the crew took the bolts out of the leg, which caused the thing to fall over, which caused the entire region of Northland to lose power? And why do we think that? Because Allison Andrew, the Chief Executive, sounded guilty as all hell in her media interviews this morning.  

“I didn't want to talk about it, it's really unhelpful to speculate at the moment, we have to focus on the power restoration.” - I mean, come on. In 2024, when modern communication is in your pocket – no one believes that Allison Andrew doesn't already know what happened. Of course she does. If she doesn't, then she sucks at her job. 

Heather du Plessis Allan: We need to rethink whether this is the kind of country, and electricity system we want to be running

I'll tell you what, this morning I woke up at seven basically on the dot and when I looked at the time, I thought jeez, it's seven and I pulled my charger out of my phone because just so that I wasn't the one who tipped the entire country into darkness. 

It was a relief, wasn't it, that we managed to make it, make it through two hours this morning without the power going out. 

Apparently, according to Transpower, it's basically the reason that we managed to do it is because we all chipped in. 

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Are we running this country on Blu-Tack and paperclips?

 

Are we running this country on Blu-Tack and paperclips?

We almost had power cuts again this morning and apparently we need to get used to it because this is just the way our winters are going to be from now on.

So what happened was that Transpower issued a grid emergency just before 8am warning that we might not have enough electricity to power the country.

Reporters were on the radio telling people to delay charging laptops and cell phones and consider turning off unnecessary lights.