Behind the cold snap: What’s happening to the grid?

In the past fortnight, extreme weather has pushed New Zealand's electricity grid into record territory. Transpower was forced to issue warnings to the energy sector as demand surged past 7,400 megawatts.

For context, this is more than 9 times the total max output of Huntly power station running at full capacity. Or, the equivalent of 3.7 million power-sucking 2,000-watt column heaters being turned on at the exact same second (essentially, every single house in Aotearoa turning on two high-powered heaters at once!).