2022 Monitoring reports

On the evening of Monday 9 August 2021, New Zealand faced the largest electricity demand peak on record because of one of the coldest nights of the year. Approximately 34,000 customers, with over 17,000 in the Waikato region, experienced an electricity cut without warning.

Phase 1 of the review, which was published in September 2021, focused on assuring consumers that any problematic tools and processes used by Transpower as the system operator were urgently corrected. The focus of this report, the Phase 2 review, is a broader review. We have not found any new information to counter the Ministerial Investigation position that the ‘forced disconnection of household electricity [by Transpower] was entirely avoidable’. We make some new observations and recommendations.