Omakau business owners are frustrated following the community’s seven-hour-long power cut on Friday, the third outage in two weeks.

The latest unplanned outage also affected parts of Alexandra and Moa Creek, with many remaining without power during the height of the working day.

The outage occurred just as an electrical storm was also passing over the district.

Luana Gallo, of Muddy Creek Cafe, said power went off about 1.20pm.

The team couldn’t operate much of their equipment, including the coffee machine and fryer, so they closed about 3pm, four hours early, which meant loss of revenue.

Marjorie Paris, of Omakau Supermarket, said although she was able to remain open during the power cut, it was not business as usual.

With no back-up generator, all the shop’s fridges and freezers stopped working, along with the eftpos machine.

“I said to some of the locals, come back and pay later because I knew the people.”

Friday’s power outage has continued to cause her problems after her computer "blew up" during the outage and the eftpos machine no longer functions correctly.

A light in one of her fridges also no longer works, but aside from that, the fridge does function.

“It’s really annoying,” she said, of the problems the outage has caused.

Tony Herbert, of Omakau Auto Centre, had his own set of problems to deal with as a result of the outage.

“I had four guys standing around not being able to work, we had three vehicles jammed on hoists that the customers wanted back that night. So, we couldn’t give them their vehicles back until the next day.”

He also couldn’t use the air compressor and pumping petrol was not an option.

“We lost everything.”

A would-be-customer, who desperately needed fuel, had to get their partner to bring them some to get home.

Tony said the ongoing outages were “frustrating” because Aurora Energy had spent time, money and effort upgrading the system

However, the community was still getting hit with power cuts, with Friday's affecting four hours of his and his staff's working day.

Tony also offers an AA breakdown service, but callouts weren’t able to come through to him.

A power cut hit parts of Omakau, Alexandra and Moa Creek during stormy weather on Friday. PHOTO: The Central App

According to Aurora Energy, there were 228 customers in Omakau who were without power from 10.40am on Friday. 

It returned briefly before being fully restored about 8.30pm.

In Moa Creek the power went out at about 1.15pm affecting 302 customers, which was estimated to come back on at 6pm.

Parts of Alexandra also lost power at 2.20pm, which affected 853 customers.

Many of those people were also left without power on January 19 and 23, when a widespread outage affected almost 8000 customers extending from Clyde to Ettrick and Lauder Flat.

Aurora Energy has confirmed last week's outage was "largely" due to a damaged overhead conductor, strong winds and intermittent lightning, which impacted the local network.

Aurora Energy general manager for network operations Matt Settle said crews responded to an initial fault that impacted customers in the Lauder Flat area; the fault was repaired, but shortly after a lightning strike on another part of the Omakau network cut power to the same 228 customers, plus a larger area.

"We are aware these unplanned outages caused by bad weather come on the back of two recent outages in January and we know this will be very frustrating for customers. We have also experienced some glitches with our new outage website that we've now resolved."

More information about the unplanned outages in January can be found here: Aurora Energy explains recent power outages in Central Otago

Read more: Third power cut strikes Central in two weeks

Read more: Sequence of events cause of recent power outages