“Our role now is to ensure the network can provide whatever services customers want, and that is changing. Because we’re investing in long-life assets, we have to make intergenerational decisions around how the network will be used.”
Aurora Energy is New Zealand’s seventh-largest electricity network by customer connections, supplying electricity to over 93,500 homes, farms, small businesses and large commercial operations throughout Dunedin, Central Otago, Wānaka and Queenstown Lakes.
A Council Controlled Organisation, owned by Dunedin City Council, in its present form Aurora Energy was established in 2017 following a demerger from Delta, the contracting side of the business.
Chief Executive Dr Richard Fletcher says up until 2017, there had been a significant period of underinvestment in the network, and that was one of the key reasons for separating out the business. “Since then, we have step-changed our investment considerably, investing $60 million to $70 million a year on the network, where previously it was $15 million to $20 million a year.”
“For the first three years in operation, we were addressing the backlog in underinvestment and restoring the health of the assets, which we are now largely on top of. There are significant investments being undertaken to upgrade the network to increase capacity to meet future demand, particularly in the Queenstown, Wānaka and Upper Clutha areas.”
“Our role now is to ensure the network can provide whatever services customers want, and that is changing. Because we’re investing in long-life assets, we have to make intergenerational decisions around how the network will be used.”
Industry awards provide the perfect opportunity for businesses to showcase their work within communities, and the extraordinary efforts made by their team members to bring extraordinary projects to life. Last year, Aurora Energy won two of the eight awards available at the highly prestigious New Zealand Energy Excellence Awards, which recognises excellence and achievement across the energy sector.
“We won the Network Initiative of the Year Award and the Community Initiative of the Year Award,” says Richard. “Winning those awards was gratifying for the Aurora Energy team after three or four years of really hard work. We were also shortlisted for the Infrastructure New Zealand Community Outcomes Award.”
Both awards were for Aurora Energy’s work on the Dunedin Harbour Crossing upgrade project. Six old lattice towers and overhead lines between Port Chalmers and Portobello were end-of-life and there was a choice between like-for-like replacement or a more aesthetically pleasing, environmentally friendly and enduring solution.
“The towers and lines were the first thing that visitors arriving by cruise ship saw on entering the harbour, and they were also a danger to wildlife. So, we chose to remove the towers and overhead lines and replace them with submarine cables. But it was the way we engaged with the community that I was really pleased about.”
“We engaged with the wider community including local iwi, local businesses, local community groups, and the Dunedin City Council and brought everyone along with what we were doing, seeking and adding their input. The support that we got was gratifying, even though there were times when we disrupted the power supply while doing some of the work.”
“So we share these awards with the community because their support helped make this unique project successful. Winning the awards was an affirmation that Aurora Energy is doing the right thing, particularly with community engagement.”
Since completing the project, it has been complemented with tree planting on the island where the towers were removed, with team members joining the local community to plant natives donated by Aurora Energy. “It has been a great project involving a lot people across the community. I wish every project we did could be like that.”
Aurora Energy’s community engagement with the Dunedin Harbour Crossing upgrade project showcases the company’s focus on being a customer/community-focused provider of energy, with communication at its heart. Richard makes the point that customers want reliable power, but they also want information on when the power is going to go out, or if it goes out unexpectedly, they want to know why and when it will come back on.
“The community wants to know that we’re acting in their long-term interest, that there is oversight on what they are paying for their power and that we are operating efficiently. So our engagement with the community is ensuring that we keep the power on and that we communicate.”
Attending community events such as A&P shows, being present on the ground before, during and after a project, writing directly to communities, people and businesses, and a new, more informative website about to be launched are all ways in which the Aurora Energy team engages and communicates with communities.
“People have an expectation that power should be available one hundred percent of the time, but it can’t be. So the more we communicate the better.”
Aurora Energy employs 160 staff across its three offices; Dunedin, a satellite office in Cromwell and a small Christchurch office established to assist with the recruitment of staff with specialist skills. The diversity of roles includes electrical engineers, project managers, customer service staff, IT, finance, operations, human resources and people, health, safety and wellbeing specialists and more recently, sustainability and environmental staff.
As Richard observes, like most businesses Aurora Energy needs to retain its people and attract new people into the business. “We have a graduate programme which runs each year, enabling graduates to move around the various areas of the business so that they can see what we are about. We place a lot of emphasis on supporting the development of our staff.”
“We have an in-house leadership programme which commenced late last year. We do staff surveys throughout the year to understand what our staff’s concerns might be, which we then aim to address. As a result of that, we have introduced flexible working and we enable our people to work out of any of our offices.”
The younger generation of staff coming through wants to know what we’re doing around diversity and inclusiveness, and our environmental and governance responsibilities. We take those very seriously.”
© Waterford Press Ltd 2023 – Independent Print Media New Zealand
