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Kōrero: Energy supply and use

Auckland blackout, 1998

Video file

Auckland’s 1998 power crisis resulted in a loss of supply to parts of the city that lasted for five weeks. While the city centre ‘throbbed with diesel generators and looked like a war zone’, hospitals cancelled operations, factories halted production, and staff lost pay. Eleven years and a few power cuts later, the electricity network was described in the local newspaper as ‘a succession of power cuts waiting to happen’.

Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi

TV3

Source: Editorial, ‘Transpower’s Auckland grid a power cut waiting to happen’, New Zealand Herald, 8 February 2009

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Me pēnei te tohu i te whārang

Megan Cook, Energy supply and use – Electricity after the Second World War, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/mi/video/21451/auckland-blackout-1998 (accessed 4 June 2026).

He kōrero nā Megan Cook, i tāngia i te 12 April 2010.