1998 Auckland power crisis - wikipedia 1998 Auckland power crisis This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. ( February 2014 ) The 1998 Auckland power crisis was a five - week - long power outage affecting the central city of Auckland, New Zealand in February and March ( southern summer ) of 1998. At the time, almost all of downtown Auckland was supplied with electricity by Mercury Energy Limited via four 110 kV power cables from the national grid at Transpower 's Penrose substation, with two cables each connecting to two central city substations at Liverpool Street and Quay Street. The two cables connecting to Quay Street were 40 - year - old gas - insulated cables that were past their replacement date. One of the Quay Street cables failed on 20 January, possibly due to the unusually hot and dry conditions, although this did not warrant a crisis as the three remaining cables could still supply the central city. The second Quay street cable failed on 9 February, leaving only the Liverpool Street cables supplying the city. Due to the increased load from the failure of the first cables, these remaining two cables failed on 19 and 20 February, leaving the entire central city supplied by a single 22 kV cable from Kingsland, resulting in about 20 city blocks ( except parts of a few streets ) losing all power. Queen Street was almost deserted for the first few days, as few businesses could operate. Some brought goods out onto the street to sell, but heavy rain in the first week made that impractical. Generators were brought in from around the country to power essential services and some businesses. These made Queen Street a very noisy place and thus deterred customers. Some businesses estimated that the outage cost them at least NZ $60,000 per week. In the five weeks it took to restore the power supply, about 60,000 of the 74,000 people who worked in the area worked from home or from relocated offices in the suburbs. Some businesses relocated staff to other New Zealand cities, or even to Australia. The majority of the 6,000 apartment dwellers in the area had to find alternative accommodation. Temporary power was supplied to the Port of Auckland by the Union Rotorua, a gas turbine powered cargo ship. The old gas cables were found to be repairable and were put back into service, but were restricted to 30 MVA capacity. The newer oil cables were irreparable, so to restore full supply to the city, a temporary 110 kV overhead line was constructed along the rail corridor between Penrose and Liverpool Street. Energy Minister Max Bradford commissioned an independent report into the Auckland Power Supply Failure. The report of the Ministerial Inquiry was released on 21 July 1998. Following the crisis Mercury Energy Limited disposed of its electricity and gas retail business and, renamed Vector Limited, replaced the cables and reinforced the supply into Auckland. In 2001, a 9 km tunnel from Penrose to Hobson Street via Liverpool Street was completed, containing two new 110 kV cables to replace the damaged Liverpool Street cables and the temporary overhead line. A third 110 kV cable was installed from Mount Roskill to Quay Street via Liverpool Street, largely superseding the old gas cables which were eventually decommissioned. See also 2006 Auckland Blackout References Jump up ^ Stern, Eric ; Newlove, Lindy ; Svedin, Lina ( 1 January 2003 ). Auckland Unplugged : Coping with Critical Infrastructure Failure. Lexington Books. ISBN 9780739107744. Jump up ^ `` Ministerial Inquiry into the Auckland Power Supply Failure ''. NZ Herald. 21 July 1998. Retrieved 5 April 2012. External links Gutman, Peter ( 1998 ), Auckland 's Power Outage or Auckland -- Your Y2K Beta Test Site, Auckland, New Zealand, archived from the original on 8 February 1999, retrieved 22 November 2014 -- A detailed and hilarious write up on the crisis. Final report of the Ministerial Inquiry into the Auckland Power Supply Failure Life in the Dark an article in Wired ( magazine ) Issue 7.04 describing the commercial and human impacts of the outage and discussing secondary effects. Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1998_Auckland_power_crisis&oldid=801966495 '' Categories : History of Auckland Electric power blackouts 1998 in New Zealand 1998 in economics Electric power in New Zealand Man - made disasters in New Zealand February 1998 events March 1998 events Hidden categories : Use dmy dates from September 2017 Articles lacking in - text citations from February 2014 All articles lacking in - text citations Talk About Wikipedia Deutsch Edit links This page was last edited on 23 September 2017, at 02 : 44 ( UTC ). About Wikipedia

Question: when did auckland suffer a 5 week blackout
Answer: 1998