Waitaki Power Station is New Zealand's oldest large hydro station still in service, generating on the Waitaki River since 1935. During a transformer replacement project at the station, the site team hit a snag: the neutral current transformer supplied for the job wasn't suited to the installation. Space constraints around the transformer meant the standard unit couldn't practically be fitted, and with an outage window in play, a typical procurement lead time of several months wasn't an option.
The contractor called us on a Wednesday afternoon. Rather than quoting from a catalogue, our first step was to understand the site. After reviewing the constraints, we recommended an alternative configuration purpose-built for the confined space, and committed to a timeline most manufacturers wouldn't touch.
One working week later, the new unit was designed, manufactured, fully tested in our IANZ-accredited laboratory, and personally delivered back to Waitaki by our team, who were given a rare look inside one of New Zealand's most important generation sites in the process. The scale is something else.
This is what local manufacturing makes possible. With design, production and accredited testing all under one roof in Christchurch, we control every step: no offshore lead times, no third-party labs, no surprises. When critical grid infrastructure needs a fast answer, that capability is the difference between a project delayed and a project delivered.
At TWS, fast turnaround on critical components isn't the exception. It's what we're built for.
