There are no major street light faults currently
Street light faults need to be reported to Council in the first instance, and we will work with our utility provider to diagnose and repair the fault.
Street lights are probably one of the highest profile assets that Council has and in some cases Council is entirely reliant on a Utility Operator to maintain the service. In relation to the street lights, Council owns the lanterns (lights) and the dedicated street light poles. Other poles which have a shared use are owned by a utility operator which is generally Wellington Electricity Ltd (WEL). WEL also own and maintain all the cable that supplies the power to the street lights. What this means is that if there are individual lanterns not working then it is probably a fault with the lantern and Council’s contractor can fix it, however, if there are a number of lanterns not working it is more than likely a circuit fault which WEL is responsible for fixing.
Circuit Faults are not always easy to locate and not always a consistent fault but can be intermittent in nature where a fuse is replaced and the lights are then left going only to find that they fail again. A process of sectionalising the circuit or transferring parts of the circuit to other supplies is used to locate these. Some may be due to debris contacting the lighting circuits or intermittent faults within the light stands etc. Other faults can be in underground cables that can be very hard to find and which need to be progressively isolated until the fault is located and repaired.
In some areas WEL have found that the faults have been in different parts of the network and different streets. The faults have been different, though some faults were occurring around the same time which meant that large areas were in darkness at the same time.
Council has performance targets within its maintenance contract that our contractor consistently meets, WEL also has a performance target of repairing 80% of network faults within 5 working days and across the Region WEL’s contractor is generally meeting this target.
It is accepted that if your area is in darkness whether the contractor is generally meeting their performance target or not is not very comforting, all you want is the street lights working. Council and WEL want exactly the same result and strive to achieve that result.