A power outage has taken out supply to a chunk of Napier’s central business district during a busy retail period with passengers from two cruise ships in town.

Unison’s website said the unscheduled outage started at 10.41am on Monday, affecting 192 customers on Dickens St, Dalton St, Station St, Emerson St, Hastings St and Marine Parade.

Unison had listed the outage status as “partial restoration” and power began to return to some businesses in the affected area by 11.15am, but power supply is continuing to fluctuate in the city.

Unison listed the expected end time for the outage as 1.42pm Monday.

“Our fault team recently arrived onsite and is endeavouring to find the cause of the outage, and undertake repairs, as soon as possible,” a Unison spokesperson said in a statement.

The outage hit as passengers from two cruise ships, the 3100-passenger cruise ship Grand Princess and the 2770-passenger Resilient Lady, were in town.

Kolachi cafe, on Emerson St, owner Jaz Singh said it was tough timing, and they were forced to close temporarily while the power was out.

“We have no other option than to close at this point because we don’t know when power is returning,” he said, about half an hour into the outage.

He said it would have been an extremely busy period, given the influx of foot traffic from the visiting cruises.

“We are only open until 2pm so this is pretty much peak hours of operation,” He said.

“It would have been out the gate [busy].”

A power outage has taken out supply to a large chunk of Napier’s central business district. Photo / Gary Hamilton-Irvine

Cool Toys, in Napier CBD, worker Garrett Chan said they had just opened the store when the power went out.

He said with cruise ships visiting the city, it was bad timing to have the outage.

Chan said they could still operate with cash sales, but everything else was down.

Thousands of tourists were strolling around the city at the time of the outage.

MORE TO COME