A Central Otago woman woke up gasping for air when the region’s second major power cut in less than a week rendered her vital medical equipment useless.
The outage started just before midnight on Tuesday and Aurora’s website showed power had been restored to all customers by 6.36am yesterday.
The outages affected 7979 customers from the Cromwell Gorge to Beaumont and into the Maniototo - the same areas that also lost power for most of last Friday morning.
"Within a minute of the power being cut I woke up feeling like I was being suffocated.
"It was a bit of a shock," she said.
She could stop breathing up to 32 times an hour while asleep, and considered her CPAP machine lifesaving equipment, Ms Dunn said.
She immediately contacted Aurora and was told it was a widespread issue.
She struggled to get back to sleep and only did so when power was restored to her house and CPAP machine about two hours later, she said.
Buying a back-up generator, as Aurora suggested medically dependent customers should consider, was not realistic for many people, she said.
A power pack could be a short-term solution for unplanned power outages, she said.
Central Otago District Mayor Tim Cadogan yesterday echoed concerns he raised following Friday’s outage.
"It’s concerning to have two major outages at such close proximity in time," he said.
He was troubled Aurora was not able to provide a specific cause, particularly when the two outages seemed to be similar.
"When they say that there should be reasons able to be given [later next week] - I’m looking forward to hearing what they are."
Aurora Energy operations and network performance general manager Matt Settle said yesterday the outage happened after two lines connected to the national grid tripped.
"Both of the main lines that feed the Central Otago network from the Clyde grid exit point - where Aurora Energy takes electricity from Transpower’s national grid — tripped."
He was briefed late yesterday by staff investigating the latest outage, he said.
"The investigation is ongoing but I can confirm that a specific sequence of events resulted in the outage and mitigations have been put in place to prevent a repeated event."
Specialist staff would look into whether were was a link between the two outages.
He hoped to have more information later next week.
Aurora Energy declined a request for an interview with chief executive Richard Fletcher yesterday, saying he would be available when more was known about the cause of the fault.
