An investigation into why two widespread power outages recently occurred across parts of Central Otago, has found a “sequence of events” was the cause.

Aurora Energy launched an investigation on Wednesday, following the district’s second power outage in just four days.

The investigation team has confirmed a “specific sequence of events” resulted in the outage and mitigations have been put in place to “prevent a repeated event”.

The latest power outage happened on Tuesday night, plunging almost 8000 customers into darkness.

It affected residents in Alexandra, Clyde, the Teviot Valley, Chatto Creek, Omakau, the Ida Valley and Maniototo.

Another widespread outage, just four days earlier, affected 1030 customers in Clyde and 6949 across the wider Alexandra area.

Aurora Energy general manager operations and network performance Matt Settle said Wednesday’s outage occurred when both the main lines that feed the Central Otago network from the Clyde grid exit point tripped.

“Our 24/7 fault crew patrolled the lines and no obvious fault was found, however our internal protection systems were activated and we are looking into why this occurred.”

Part of the investigation is to request records from Transpower.

A specialist team has been set up to undertake the systematic review of operational records and logs.