By Fallen line, sparks or smoke
Stay back at least 8 metres, keep clear of standing water near a downed line, and call 111 first. A conductor brought down across a Matamata-Piako paddock by a silage truck or a tree is the most common rural hazard here.
Help your neighbours
Live community map & report a power cut
If neighbours are also without power, the fault is on the network, not your switchboard. The map below shows outages reported by other Selectra readers across New Zealand in real time. Use it as a first diagnostic before you call: if an active outage is already plotted near you, crews likely know about it. A short anonymous report helps others see what is happening in your suburb. It does not replace the call to your lines company.
Immediate danger
Fallen power line, sparks, burning smell or smoke? Call 111 before reporting anything else. Stay back at least 8 metres from any downed line.
Unable to load outage data. Please try again later.
Report a power cut
Thanks: your report is recorded
Now make the official call to your lines company so a crew is dispatched. For a fallen line or any hazard, dial 111 first.
Who fixes the fault
Your lines company and its 24/7 fault line
Only the lines company that owns the poles and wires in your street can dispatch a crew. Call the number below if your report shows the outage is on the network.
Powerco
Matamata and the Matamata-Piako district
National Powerco faults line, answered 24/7. The same number covers every town and farm on the eastern Waikato network.
Coverage: Matamata township, Hinuera, Waharoa, Tatuanui, Walton, Tower Road, Hobbiton/Buckland Road, and the surrounding Matamata-Piako dairy farms.
Plains, paddocks and long spurs
What drives Matamata-Piako outages
Matamata sits on the flat eastern Waikato plains at the foot of the Kaimai Range. The town itself is compact, but the network feeding it stretches a long way across open farmland, and that is where most local cuts begin.
Long rural spurs
Tatuanui, Walton, Hinuera: overhead lines run kilometres out from the town to scattered dairy sheds. A single fault on one of these spurs can darken a string of farms, and the truck has further to travel to reach it.
Kaimai winds and storms
Waharoa, the Kaimai foothills: easterly gales spilling over the range bring down branches and shelter-belt trees onto lines. Spring and autumn fronts are the usual trigger for the bigger multi-property cuts.
Farm machinery strikes
Across the dairy paddocks: silage harvesters, tip trucks and irrigation gear clipping overhead lines is a recurring cause of localised outages. Powerco runs rural-safety messaging on staying clear of conductors for exactly this reason.
A Matamata tip
If your home goes dark but the streetlights and your neighbours stay on, the problem is almost always your own switchboard or a tripped RCD, not Powerco. Check the main switch and any garage or hot-water sub-board before you ring the fault line. On a working farm, also check the dairy shed board, which often sits on its own fuse.
Appliance damaged after a Matamata outage? Your claim path
Powerco does not run a standing public damage-claim portal for surge losses, so the reliable route for a Matamata household is through insurance and your retailer. Treat it as an insurance matter first.
- 1Call 0800 27 27 27 and ask for the incident reference, the time and the recorded cause of the outage.
- 2Lodge a claim with your contents insurer, since surge and power-fluctuation damage to appliances is normally covered by a standard contents policy.
- 3Send a written notice to your electricity retailer with the incident reference, photos, the original receipt and a registered electrician's report linking the failure to the network event.
- 4Expect 4 to 8 weeks. Appliances under 5 years old with a registered electrician's report fare best; pure-weather outages are usually treated as force majeure.
Matamata questions
Frequently asked questions: Matamata outages
Powerco, 24 hours a day, on 0800 27 27 27. The same number covers Matamata township, Waharoa, Hinuera, Tatuanui and the surrounding farms. For a hazard such as a fallen line, dial 111 first.
Check the live community map above for reports near you, then confirm against the official Powerco outage map, which plots active and planned outages by address. If nothing is shown and only your house is affected, the fault is most likely your own switchboard, not the Matamata-Piako network.
A single fault in Matamata township is often back inside 1 to 2 hours. Outages on the long rural spurs to Walton, Tatuanui or Hinuera can run 2 to 6 hours because crews travel further and may need to patrol the line to find the fault. A major storm bringing down trees across several feeders can stretch beyond that in the most remote dairy areas.
Yes. Powerco gives at least 5 working days notice of planned maintenance by letter or email, and lists the same work on the live outage map under "Planned". If someone in your household is medically dependent on power, register through your electricity retailer so you receive proactive notice and can plan around it.
Powerco does not run a standing public surge-claim portal, so start with your contents insurance, which normally covers appliance damage from power surges. Also send a written request to your electricity retailer with the incident reference, photos, the receipt and a registered electrician's report. Claims tied to a specific equipment fault on the network succeed more often than pure-weather outages, which are usually excluded.
Nearby outage guides
Power outages across the Waikato
Same storm front, different lines company. If the cut reaches a neighbouring town, here is the right 24/7 fault line and live map for the rest of the Waikato.
See the regional hub: Waikato power outages, or browse every New Zealand region.