Today I got up early to pack and head up to Haywards for my tour of the station. The site is owned and run by Transpower but Siemens were doing the upgrading from the very outdated 50 year old system. Michael, the representative from Transpower, gave me the grand tour. Haywards substation is where the HVDC link across the Cook Strait terminates on the North Island. The upgrade is to decommsion the old Pole 1, which is the last substation in the world to use mercury arc valves and build a new Pole 3, along with strengthening Pole 2 and the rest of the site in case of earthquakes! The tour took me around Pole 1 and inside the chamber for Pole 3, which in a few months will be locked up and no one will
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