Electricity is back on in Taupō after the town was blacked out this afternoon, Transpower says.
Photo: Wikicommons
About 16,000 homes or businesses were without electricity.
A spokesperson for power company Unison, Danny Gough, said the power went out about 1.30pm.
There was a problem during routine maintenance at Transpower's substation, he said.
Several businesses were forced to close.
Taupō McDonald's owner Des Byrne said when the power went off and they learned it was a serious outage, staff had quickly locked down the fridges and freezers and shut up shop.
Mr Byrne did not want to say how much his business would have lost but said the bars in the centre of town would have probably been worse affected as happy hour hit.
If Transpower managed to fix the fault soon, the impact would not be too bad, he said.
"No doubt those poor buggers are working their buns off to get it back on, but there's not much you can do about it really," he said.