More than 100,000 people in Hawke's Bay are currently without power, and Transpower has warned that it may take "days or weeks" to restore electricity to all affected areas.
The outage has been caused by damage to the power infrastructure in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle.
The silt-submerged Napier substation, which had been identified as needing critical flood protection two years ago, was severely damaged in the storm, which has contributed to the collapse of communication infrastructure across the region as well.
To provide an update on the situation, Tova O'Brien spoke with John Clarke, Transpower's General Manager of Grid Development, to find out the latest number of people still without power.
"The latest update I had late last night, was that 71,000 people are now without power. That's down from 28,000 yesterday and down from over 200,000 the day before," Clarke said.
"Our biggest constraint is access - getting into some of these places and, in some cases, the scale of the damage.
"As a sector, we are really mindful of the impact of people not having electricity in this time of disruption, trying to recover from the disaster. We're working really hard to get power back."
Clarke said isolated communities across the country can expect to get their power restored in either a few days for some or "maybe a week".
"For those from really isolated communities where they've not got communications or need to get heavy equipment in - and this is not Transpower this would be distribution companies - they probably should be prepared for a few more days, maybe a week," Clarke said.
"Other areas, more urban areas, it may be a matter of days or even today when they get power back on… but that's just a generic scaling."
Clarke commented that revising substations that were flooded by Cyclone Gabrielle is not a simple matter, when asked about the possibility of improving and preventing future flooding.
"These are NZD$60 million assets. It's not a trivial matter just to go and fix them," Clarke said.
"You've got to work out the most cost-effective way to fix them, it takes time and money to do.
"We acknowledge the issue that substations got flooded but people can be confident we're working hard.
"We have a plan and we're working with Unison to get power back on in Hawke's Bay."
Clarke said the substation in the Hawke's Bay region will be fixed as soon as possible, telling O'Brien he had "good news" regarding Napier as well.
"We are confident that by the end of today, we will get power to another substation that was deprived of power… and that will allow us and Unison to at least partly restore Napier."
The power outage has also had a significant impact on local businesses and the wider community, with many facing a loss of income and other challenges.
Listen to the full interview between John Clarke and Tova above.
You can also download the full interview on the Tova podcast, and listen on the go.
