New Zealand effectively ran out of power on Monday night, forcing tens of thousands of Kiwis to shiver through one of the coldest nights of the year.
As a polar blast ripped across Aotearoa, homes across North Island were left without electricity for several hours.
State-owned power transmission company Transpower said demand for energy hit an all-time high as Kiwis turned on their heaters, kettles, dryers and electric blankets.
Their response to the surge was to require distribution companies to reduce load - a deliberate blackout to manage load, leaving many in the dark.
"This was a grid emergency across all of New Zealand," Transpower executive Stephen Jay told Radio NZ.
"We knew that last evening peak was going to be an all-time high for New Zealand ... there was insufficient generation offered in to be able to meet that peak.
"Our only means of controlling and stabilising the system (in that situation) is to reduce the demand on the system."
The blackouts affected parts of central North Island and Waikato, but also Auckland, Wellington, Hawke's Bay and other regional centres.
Mr Jay apologised for the "rare event", which may see Transpower issue further restrictions.
"At the moment we have a very tight generation demand ... we will manage that extremely carefully," Mt Jay said.
The outages have a political fallout, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's government in the crosshairs of many cold Kiwis.
It appears both the country's biggest power station - the coal-fired Huntly power station - and key supply cables between North and South Island, burning renewable energy across the Cook Strait, were not fully operational.
"We cannot hand-on-heart say right now that all of the generation that could have come online did come online, and that is a critical question," Ms Ardern said.
"Even if it really was a peak on an extremely cold night, it is still not good enough that we weren't able to warm our homes."
Opposition leader Judith Collins said the situation was "so third world", calling on Ms Ardern to sack Energy Minister Megan Woods.
Ms Woods has pledged to find out why the shortfall in energy occurred, and why Kiwis weren't warned to conserve energy before the enforced blackouts.
