Larry Williams Drive

Are we running this country on Blu-Tack and paperclips?We almost had power cuts again this morning and apparently we need to get used to it because this is just the way our winters are going to be from now on.So what happened was that Transpower issued a grid emergency just before 8am warning that we might not have enough electricity to power the country.Reporters were on the radio telling people to delay charging laptops and cell phones and consider turning off unnecessary lights.Lines companies were turning ripple-controlled hot water systems in people’s homes.Three things went wrong all at the same time: a gas turbine in Stratford failed to spark, one of Huntly’s turbines stopped working properly and the wind dropped which mean the wind farms stopped producing enough power.This is close to a repeat of what happened last year when a bunch of things went wrong all at exactly the same time: some seaweed got stuck in a hydro pump, Huntly couldn’t fire up another generator fast enough and the wind dropped.Last