"Apart from the eastern suburbs, these include small pockets across the city where there are significant faults," lines company Orion chief executive Roger Sutton said this afternoon.
Staff today undertook damage assessments of properties in Redcliffs, Sumner and Mt Pleasant.
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"Significant seismic damage exists in these areas," Mr Sutton said. "We have progressively restored 50 per cent of power to this area."
He said good progress was made today on the 66kV overhead line to supply Brighton substation from the Transpower Bromley substation, with 30 per cent of the poles erected.
The completion of the 2.5km line is the first step in restoring power to Dallington and Brighton.
"We still believe it could be a number of weeks before power is fully restored to these areas," Mr Sutton said.
"We continue to work under Civil Defence instructions in terms of priorities for the restoration of power to Christchurch. Today, for example, they requested that we turn off power within the
cordon area of the four avenues during a grid search."
The fragile nature of the network meant there would be small unexpected outages from time to time in areas already reconnected.
Mr Sutton asked customers not to call Orion's help line, except for emergencies.
"Please be patient. We have many urgent priorities at this time."
