Cut off power lines just outside Otorohanga Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
About 1750 homes in the Tekapo region remained without power overnight.
Power was cut to thousands of households in the Tekapo and Albury area on Monday morning when a crop-dusting helicopter severed two of conductors.
The pilot was safe and no one else was reported injured. Transpower estimated power would be restored on Tuesday afternoon.
Transpower executive general manager of grid delivery Mark Ryall told Morning Report the helicopter pilot was incredibly lucky.
He took out two conductors - one with the rotor and one with beam of the helicopter.
"He's managed to land safely in an emergency landing, so he's very lucky," Ryall said.
It was an unusual, but not unheard of, accident with five or six incidents involving helicopters or aircraft in the last 20 years, he said.
Crews worked on restoring the lines until dark on Monday and were due to resume at first light on Tuesday, Ryall said.
The goal remained to restore power by late Tuesday afternoon.
"If they can do it any quicker they will," Ryall said.
Things had gone smoothly so far and crews were working hard, he said.
"We feel for consumers."
Compensation was only available under the Consumer Guarantees Act or their business insurance, Ryall said.
International visitors caught by power outage
Tekapo community board chair, and local real estate agent, Steve Howes told Morning Report there were a number of Chinese and Japanese visitors staying in town during national holidays in their countries.
They were struggling to understand what was going on, he said.
"It's really the management of guest management, they just don't understand how a small town can be without power."
The outage was also causing "really massive issues" for businesses in town, particularly restaurants and hospitality, he said.
Kerr himself was powering his house from his electric vehicle, and said he had been driving round to help others.
He acknowledged such outages were not common and the cause was unexpected, but it was "a lesson in resilience," he said.
Majority of Tekapo without power
Alpine Energy chief customer and strategy officer Andrew Kerr told Morning Report about 1750 households in Tekapo were still without power.
He said they had managed to reconfigure the network to get most people restored in the Fairlie area on Monday.
Although people were being asked to conserve power there so as many households as possible could be kept on, Kerr said.
"We're working with Transpower... essentially we're waiting for them to fix the lines (that were) affected by the helicopter."
Kerr said the system serving Tekapo was separate and "most people in Tekapo will be without power".
Generators were being used to supply some public services, such as the fire station, public toilets and community centre, he said.
The community centre would be open today for anyone need to charge their phone or get a cup of tea.
Local woman Angie Taylor said some residents were more used to power outages, but there were a number of international visitors in the town that were struggling.
"It's a tourism town and the tourists are the ones that aren't coping at all. We've got no [public] toilets able to work, they're all powered up," she said.
"The ironic thing is we live next to a hydro lake where a lot of the power is sourced from. Hopefully tonight we'll be back up and running."
"We're fortunate that it is spring and the weather is good today but I think it's supposed to come in wet tomorrow."
