Powerco’s upgrade nears end

Powerco’s $30.3 million dollar upgrade to improve the reliability and capacity of Palmerston North’s power supply is entering its final stages.

Palmerston North project manager Ben Quitiquit says the five-year upgrade to the city’s power network was about halfway completed.

Quitiquit said the project would link Transpower’s Linton grid exit-point substation through the city to its Bunnythorpe counterpart and was expected to be completed by 2021.

A recently built $4.5m substation in Palmerston North would act as a centre for the expanded supply network.

The substation, on the corner of Ferguson and Linton streets, was completed in May and would gradually take a larger share of the power load from the Pascal St and Main St substations over the next six months, Quitiquit said.

Powerco installed 33-kilovolt cables between the three substations over the past year and they will go live from October.

Then, over the next two to three years, power cables will be run through the ducts along the underside of the He Ara Kotahi cycle and pedestrian bridge to link the substation to Linton.

Palmerston North mainly drew power from the Bunnythorpe substation, which was running at 100 per cent capacity.

Quitiquit said Palmerston North mainly drew power from the Bunnythorpe substation, which was running at 100 per cent capacity, so there wasn’t much leeway for additional power demand.

The Linton substation, contrastingly, was at 60 per cent capacity and the new cables would allow the city to draw more power from there.

Quitiquit said balancing the power load between the two would give Palmerston North a more resilient power supply network that was better able to cope with the city’s growth.

The project will also see the last of the temporary power poles along Main St come down.

A 3-kilometre, 33,000-volt overhead power cable went up along the street in 2016, after a power cable fault cut the power to about 250 central city properties.

One stretch of overhead cable remains on Main St.