Police seized 11 guns from the farmer whose property was at the centre of a land access dispute during yesterday's power outages in Auckland and Northland.
Linesmen had to call for a police escort when they were barred from entering Steve Meier's farm near Hamilton to make repairs after pylons there sparked a fire in trees.
The fire, combined with a lack of back-up power options, caused rolling outages to more than 50,000 homes, forced businesses to close, and caused transport chaos.
Hamilton City police area commander Rob Lindsay said today 11 guns were seized and Mr Meier's firearms licence taken "because the landowner presented behaviour that gave us some concern".
"This was a precautionary step only and no arrests were made," Mr Lindsay said.
Mr Meier blamed Transpower for yesterday's cuts, saying he warned the company five years ago that a fire on his 13ha property would happen.
Transpower chief executive Patrick Strange said Mr Meier had obstructed the company when it had sent staff to trim the trees back from the pylons.
Mr Meier has fought a five-year battle, along with about 50 other landowners in the area, upset at the company's refusal to pay for easement rights for hosting its structures.
Mr Strange said Mr Meier was the most difficult person in the country to deal with.
Transpower has a right under law to enter properties to undertake maintenance work and has no legal obligation to compensate landowners as long as no "injurious effect" results.
Simon Mackenzie, chief executive of electricity retailer Vector, said that power companies still encountered difficulties accessing some private land to undertake maintenance work.
"It's something that does need to be looked at."
Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee said the outage was caused by "a bad set of circumstances", which started with the fire but was compounded by the Otahuhu power station and two other circuits being out of action for routine maintenance.
"There was a multiplicity of reasons (for the outage) and the way to fix it is to have the new high tension lines through the Waikato built as quickly as possible," he told Radio New Zealand.
Mr Mackenzie said no decision has been made yet on whether the company would compensate customers or seek compensation from Transpower over the outage.
The matter would be canvassed as part of the investigation into what happened, he said.
NZPA