Undergrounding

Down with power poles! How Entrust is helping bury them forever.

Thanks to Entrust’s majority ownership of Vector Ltd, we have an agreement with Vector that commits millions of dollars to projects in the Entrust district every year. The original agreement was for an average $10.5 million to be invested every year. This fund has historically been used for underground projects in the Entrust district and has recently been extended to include new technology such as solar and battery.

This fund has seen the look of streets all over Auckland change – so far, power lines in more than 108km of streets have disappeared.

 

How does Vector choose which streets to underground?

The main thing Vector takes into consideration is the condition of the overhead power lines and poles. If they’re in bad shape, they’re probably a good candidate for undergrounding.

Other things they consider are:

• History of faults in the area
• The number of customers who will benefit
• Whether other utility works are planned for the area (Is other digging going to happen anyway, such as for water, gas or communication work?)

 

Before and after pictures from the undergrounding project 2013/2014:

 

Undergrounding plans

Burying Auckland’s power poles is a huge job, and it’s going to take a long time.

For a full list of completed projects, plus details of what the projects cover, when they were finished and how many people they benefit, click here to go to the projects page on the Vector Electricity website.

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In this section

• Community Solar
• Undergrounding
• Energy Solutions Reports

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