Inangahua - Reefton 110 kV line

The construction of the Inangahua - Reefton 110 kV line has eased transmission constraints and provided additional security to the region from the north, and the proposed extension of this line through to Dobson will further enhance supply to Greymouth and surrounding areas.

In addition, load forecasting is carried out at the Zone Substation level and this is critical to ensure that sufficient capacity is available in Westpower sub-transmission and zone substation infrastructure.

These forecasts are developed using a zero-based approach from information and requests received directly from customers including intelligence on future load trends such as proposed dairy farm conversions. A summary of the results shows that current maximum demand is around 43.7 MW and future demand by 2018 is expected to rise to over 80 MW.

In Westpower's case, most of the sub-transmission infrastructure has been built within the last 20 years and has been prudently designed to cater for future load growth, which means that there is usually ample capacity to cater for marginal load growth.