Tonga's Ha'apai power network being rebuilt

Transcript

Tonga Power has begun rebuilding Ha'apai's electricity network after 90 percent of it was destroyed by Cyclone Ian in January.

The Asian Development Bank will fund the 2.7 million US dollar project, which is expected to take about a year to complete.

Tonga Power's chief executive, John van Brink, told Mary Baines the new network will use materials and a design more resilient to cyclones.

JOHN VAN BRINK: What happened in January was that 90 percent of our network was destroyed or severely damaged from the cyclone. Our restoration straight after the cyclone was as much based on the materials we had available and it was always found that we should actually try and make the network more resilient and use better design standards and materials. So this project will actually put whole new high voltage and low voltage networks in place throughout the two islands, connecting about 1000 customers and it will also provide underground connections through our network to the houses which makes them a lot safer and more reliable. We've only been there for about three weeks now, just over two weeks, but in that time we've managed to install 60 poles and run about two kilometres of cable, starting in the main town of Pangai on the island of Lifuka.

MARY BAINES: So you're using more cyclone resilient materials?

JVB: Yes, we're actually using aerial bundled cable, which is like an insulated cable, both on high voltage and low voltage networks. And that will obviously be more resilient to high winds, but things like branches impacting on the lines, that'll have less of an impact.

MB: Have you come into any challenges while you've been doing this, the remoteness of the islands?

JVB: Remoteness isn't too bad for us, there are regular ferries from Tongatapu to the island so we manage to get all our equipment and materials across. If there's an issue there it is probably a lack of survey that's being carried out and uncertainty around property boundaries. So before we go into a village or an area to rebuild the line we have to resurvey the whole village and make sure that we know exactly where the poles are going to go, and what we are finding is in a couple of locations the poles are actually in the middle of the roadway which happens to be a property boundary. So that's a big issue for us. The other one is the high water level, it's a very low-lying island and we're having to concrete poles in to make them secure.

MB: And how long is all this expected to take?

JVB: The project is scheduled to take 18 months and we're hoping to get finished just after just 12 months. As I said, the progress to date seems to indicate that we're going to go a lot faster than expected. There's an infrastructure project project being joint funded by the government of New Zealand and the Asian Development Bank. The electricity network upgrade of 2.7 million US dollars is being funded by the Asian Development Bank for our network upgrade.