Wild weather prompts a review of assets by Transpower

In a wild patch of weather that swept over the country in August last year a lightning strike on one of Wellington’s iconic wind sculptures - situated along Cobham Drive in Evans Bay - caused it to explode. The structure was completely destroyed with the event prompting agencies across Wellington to review their infrastructure to ensure the protection of precious assets in such circumstances.

“All our equipment is subject to protection from lightning strikes due to their height,” explains Chris Van Lent from Transfield Services. “But we decided to review it and identified that the lighting columns at the Wilton Substation, after doing some windage calculations due to the fact it's a particularly windy elevated site, may not be strong enough to deal with a decent storm like the one that took out the wind sculpture. We asked CSP to beef up the design of the columns, which includes lightning rods, as it is imperative that we protect the high voltage equipment in the power substation from strikes and make them strong enough to deal with a decent storm.”