The Central App received a number of emails responding to yesterday’s opinion piece by reporter Rowan Schindler. 

Rowan argued Central Otago was being “left in the cold" by Aurora Energy, whose energy infrastructure failed on 14 June and left Clyde in a blackout for eight hours. 

The blackout began at about 7am when the temperature was recorded at -9C, and was finally restored at about 3pm. 

Businesses had to close and houses with no fireplaces were left frigid. 

Many had been encouraged by the Otago Regional Council to replace wood burners with electric heat pumps to lessen the impact of air pollution. 

Just two days later, Clyde was blanketed by smoke from half a dozen confirmed agricultural green waste burnoffs, which was deemed by the ORC to be within the boundaries of “acceptable”. 

Pat Mackenzie wrote to the Central App and wondered if there was a way to hold those in power of Aurora’s negligible maintenance of the infrastructure accountable for their actions. 

The company, owned by the Dunedin City Council, was fined $5 million after being found guilty of neglecting its infrastructure by the High Court. 

“Is it possible to take former directors to court for their negligence? I seem to recall Graham Crombie walked away with a pile of money, while the electricity system foundered,” Pat wrote.   

The cause of the Clyde blackout was a faulty transformer.  With the backup transformer on-site not functional either, it cut Clyde off the grid.

Rosemary Scofield asked if there was another way to add further security to the energy infrastructure.

“The power outage certainly affected everyone,” Rosemary wrote. 

“This would be a major opportunity to promote the uptake of solar power in new builds and maybe subsidise the retrofit of existing houses. 

“Is there a way of kicking off such an idea for Clyde. I remember something similar was done for insulation in Ophir?”

ORC Councillor Michael Laws also chimed in and said the issue of smoke is not a new issue. 

“The nuisance burning frustrates the hell out of me,” he said. 

“Argued constantly to ORC that if a fire causes a nuisance to urban dwellers in town then its clearly offensive.”