The new substation would greatly improve the security of the electricity supply for the 690 customers in Omakau and the surrounding area.
Located next to the Omakau stockyards on Lauder-Omakau Rd, the new substation was built to replace one on Ida Valley-Omakau Rd, which was in a flood risk area and had no room for expansion.
The old substation will be decommissioned once the new one came online, he said.
The new substation would allow Aurora Energy to reconfigure its network into four feeders instead of the current single feeder.
"This will mean that during unplanned power outages on the network, depending on where the fault is, only the customers on that feeder will be impacted."
Four feeders would also give the company more options for planned maintenance, as it would allow for minimal impact on customers.
The work should be completed during March, he said.
A permanent generator had also been installed, which would be used during planned power outages.
It would provide back-up power for most of the Central Omakau community.
For unplanned outages, it was often faster to fix the fault, rather than get a qualified person to the site to run the generator, he said.
The Omakau area has power supplied by a single line from Alexandra, which meant there was no back-up supply.
To ensure that customers would have a reliable supply, Aurora Energy had also been investing in upgrades and asset renewal in the area, and more were due to be completed.
This included power pole repairs and later this year, repairs on the main line from Alexandra to Omakau.
Over the next few years, 28km of power lines would also be replaced, Mr Starkey said.
