Megan Woods, Labour’s energy spokeswoman, said the transmission pricing methodology had taken two decades to develop.

She said the Labour government had tried to address issues such as resilience and more decentralised energy generation, but given increasingly extreme weather conditions and rising demand for electricity, these plans were important.

“What could we do at the community level? We had funding from the Climate Energy Response Fund, but it was cut.”

Since a connection to the Coromandel line costs $20,000, it would probably be cheaper for homes and businesses to install their own solar systems.

When asked whether solar panels should be installed on high-value agricultural land, Woods replied that it depends on the conditions and structure of the solar plant.

“Of course, we don’t want to cover our high-quality floors with solar panels.”

However, Woods said some solar plants were built to allow agriculture to continue around or underneath them.

A key problem for energy security has been New Zealand’s narrow geography. The national electricity grid, owned by Transpower, often consists of just a single line running from north to south.

Two lines and tower sets supply Northland – one for 110 kV and the other for 220 kV, Transpower documents say.

Each of the towers had two circuits and each circuit consisted of several pieces of cable.

“One of the 220-kV circuits was out of service for maintenance and the other was in service,” Transpower’s Price said in the OIA documents.

“Both 110 kV circuits were in operation but were reconfigured to protect the equipment in the event of a failure of the 220 kV circuit that was in operation. This reconfiguration had no impact on the supply to consumers and is standard practice.”

The documents discussed that there was indeed redundancy in the system and that most regions had what was known as N-1 security.

“This means that if something happens to one circuit or transformer, there is another circuit or transformer that can take over the load,” Price told the minister’s office and other informants.

“To ensure that the power grid functions properly, we need to take circuits and transformers out of service from time to time to carry out maintenance, replacement of equipment and upgrades.

“Having these devices out of service means reduced security. In most regions, this means that if something happens to the remaining transformer or line during that time, consumers will no longer be able to access power,” Price added.

“This is standard procedure and we are working as quickly as possible to restore either the plant that is down for maintenance or the plant with the problem and restore power to the consumers. It is part of the work planning.”

The Herald The analysis showed that Transpower is considering what consequences this would have for its contractual partner Omexom.

“We have raised our concerns with Omexom management in New Zealand and Singapore,” Price wrote to Brown’s office and other recipients on June 23.

On August 1, Transpower announced that the tower collapsed because Omexom’s crew did not follow Omexom’s standard practice of removing all nuts from three of the four tower legs while performing routine maintenance on the foundation slab.

The less experienced workers were given some training but no formal training for their work. Moreover, Omexom did not provide them with the necessary skills for the tasks they carried out without supervision.

Transpower informed the Herald It reviewed Omexon’s performance in relation to all work completed over the past two years.

“Senior Omexom members appeared before the Board in June and were asked to return at the end of August to outline the recommendations and actions from the reviews and to explain their improvement programme in detail.”

Transpower added: “We trust that Omexom is working hard to resolve the issues that led to the tower collapse to ensure that something like this never happens again.”