Transmission
A trusted partner in building and maintaining Aotearoa New Zealand's national grid
Our experienced transmission construction and maintenance teams have a long and trusted partnership and experience with transmission network owners.
Northpower’s construction and maintenance capabilities on transmission networks includes lines and cables maintenance, tower and equipment refurbishment.
We bring extensive project works management expertise, as evidenced in some of the major transmission construction and maintenance projects we’re proud to have delivered.
Lines maintenance
We provide maintenance services on transmission networks on a range of structures including poles, 6 arm steel lattice towers and bridge top towers.
This includes:
- Defects identification and prioritisation based on risk and proactive scheduling to align with other works. This includes structure, bridge culverts, vegetation and track defects
- Scheduled condition assessment including poles and towers, often utilising our acoustic inspection technology (link to this section)
- Fault response with permanent, rostered stand-by staff
- Vegetation management
- PDM-L maintenance including attachment point and damper replacement, and baseplate refurbishment
Cables maintenance
Our cable maintenance capability includes specialist cable maintenance, repair and testing, and construction and undergrounding of cable assets.
This includes:
- Planned maintenance including preventative and corrective maintenance, underground maintenance, repair, and testing on 110kV and 220kV cables
- Unplanned maintenance and faults
- Project work
- Specialist cable installation utilising a purpose-built cable hauler and drum trailer
- Specialist oil cable maintenance
- Operation of Transpower’s HVAC test set
- Management of Transpower’s ‘Before U Dig’ cable location service across New Zealand
Tower and equipment refurbishment
Our experienced tower painting teams provide tower refurbishment, corrosion protection and painting services for transmission towers.
Some of the innovations we provide includes:
- Utilising wrist strapped blast remotes to control blast equipment while on a transmission tower, creating efficiencies and reducing blast injury risk
- Equipping our teams with lightweight bespoke blast suits providing less fatigue, more manoeuvrability, better temperature control providing less fatigue and improved comfort
- A bespoke lightweight five-tonne truck with custom mounted compressor, reducing manual handling and environmental impact on landowner property while improving efficiencies and safety
- Protecting the land and environment while we work by utilising 100% recyclable plastic coverings that are made in New Zealand
Battery energy storage systems
Our expertise extends to grid-scale battery energy storage systems for both residential and commercial/industrial applications, as well as high voltage and low voltage (HV/LV) services for generation assets. We work with battery vendors to provide on-the-ground services for installation, integration, commissioning, and ongoing maintenance of battery energy storage systems.
Innovation
We pride ourselves on collaborating with our customers to incorporate and integrate with their business processes and procedures wherever possible in the work we do.
Our continuous improvement ethos means we’re always looking for efficiencies and ways to do business better.
Some examples of this include:
- Effective scheduling systems and forward works planning – providing customers with proactive insights into the works programme and regular updates
- Utilisation of digital technologies in the field allowing for streamlined work processes and paper reduction. Our industry-first pilot of remotely operated digital security signs for outages at sites, improves efficiencies and cost savings. The signs can be used during emergency situations eg tsunami warnings
- Client collaboration on process and product improvements, proactively identifying issues and working alongside them to resolve as a trusted partner
- Continuous improvement of equipment – modifying our existing earthing cleaning tool to make it simpler and more time-efficient to use
What we offer
- Transmission maintenance and construction
- GSU, power and distribution transformers
- DC battery chargers
- Earthing and EPZ
- Protection scheme study solutions
- Protection scheme relay configuration
- Protection scheme control settings
- 400V to 33kV switchboards
- 11/22/33/110/220kV substations
- 11/33kV line builds, renewals and maintenance
- SCADA
- HV/LV subdivision electrical reticulation
- Equipment refurbishment
- Corrosion protection and painting of related structures
- Asset inspection, condition assessment and diagnostic services
- Remote piloted Aerial Services for line and substation assessments and inspections
- Generation maintenance and construction services
- Industrial electrical and automation services
- Engineering design
- Constructability and design review services
Grow with Northpower
Northpower is a key player in New Zealand’s energy sector. Find out more and discover the career opportunities on offer.