Dunedin students on free power deals are causing extreme peaks \u2013 leaving them cold and in the dark \u2013 and costing the lines company several hundred dollars to fix.<\/p>\n
Aurora said this winter crews had attended more than 25 outages in Dunedin’s student area caused by households overloading their electrical supply.<\/p>\n
It warned free power periods were causing high demand in the area between 9pm and midnight on weekdays, and electricity networks were not built to manage the spikes.<\/p>\n
Consumer NZ Powerswitch manager Paul Fuge told RNZ’s Checkpoint it was unusual to have such a large group of people in one area all doing the same thing.<\/p>\n
“This is an issue that’s cropped up several times over the years in Dunedin where clusters of student flats are getting on the free hour plans and then going nuts during the free hour and basically blowing their fuses,” he said.<\/p>\n
“They probably go a little bit silly with it. It’s like a smorgasbord, it’s kind of you’ve paid a set amount, and you can eat as much as you want, so you sort of overconsume.<\/p>\n
“The problem that the network company will be seeing is students are using more power than they probably would normally. So just because it’s free, they can turn everything on, so they do, and what that means is they kind of blow the fuses.<\/p>\n
“It’s the equivalent of putting on 14 1-kilowatt heaters in your house, [that] would basically blow the fuse and that’s the level they’re getting to.”<\/p>\n
Fuge said retailers should warn about over-consumption limits and the pressure on the grid.<\/p>\n
“It’s not really a problem in most areas; most places it’s a good thing because it’s good for the network to be not overloaded during peak times. This is kind of an extreme case in particular to the students of Dunedin, but they could put reasonable use or fair use clauses in,” he said.<\/p>\n
“There needs to be a level of reasonableness on both sides, so I think it’s an education thing. So sure, the students want to use as much power as they can and that’s understandable, but there needs to be limits to that, there’s some practical, physical constraints on the network for that.”<\/p>\n