Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): I wish to make a ministerial statement relating to yesterday's power outages. Yesterday, an emergency mechanism in the electricity system was triggered by the system operator, Transpower, requesting network companies direct grid connections to reduce load on their networks. Network companies then took action in response to this request, which saw a number of power outages across the North Island between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. last night. This situation was caused due to insufficient generation being available to meet unprecedented demand on a cold winter's evening across the country.