That had locked polar air in place, and clear skies meant any remaining heat radiated away, and temperatures plummeted. <\/p>\n
Frost in Parua Bay this morning.
Frost blanketed parts of Northland as temperatures plummeted. Photo \/ Yolisa Tswanya<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s quite easily the coldest morning of the year,\u201d White said. <\/p>\n
Temperatures in Northland today would see highs around 14C. <\/p>\n
Whang\u0101rei was forecast to experience 0C overnight again, he said.<\/p>\n
However, temperatures could be slightly warmer for the likes of Kait\u0101ia and Kerikeri.<\/p>\n
In the North Island, the coldest town this morning was Taumarunui at -5.6C. Hamilton at -2.6C, Taup\u014d just under -2C and Rotorua -2.5C, according to MetService.<\/p>\n
It was a frosty start in Whangarei’s Totara Parklands on Thursday. Photo \/ Denise Piper<\/p>\n
Transpower said this morning\u2019s electricity use broke a record set only yesterday, with an average of 7415 megawatts of power being used during the peak. <\/p>\n
That was up from 7247 megawatts yesterday morning, driven mostly by increased demand from Auckland consumers. <\/p>\n
The increase was about the same as the size of Hamilton\u2019s electricity use, Transpower said.<\/p>\n
Transpower earlier warned of energy shortfalls between 7.30am and 8.30am today as temperatures plunged across New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Energy Minister Simeon Brown told Ryan Bridge TODAY the system is tight.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally they would hope to have around 200 megawatts residual \u2026 I\u2019m advised it\u2019s around half or just a bit under half.\u201d<\/p>\n
Residual is between how much is being generated and how much is being used.<\/p>\n
Transpower executive general manager operations, Chantelle Bramley, said the system operator was managing the tight balance between supply and demand during the cold spell.<\/p>\n
Transpower has a graduated three-notch system to alert the country\u2019s generators that the grid could become stretched by increased demand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have issued a range of Customer Advice Notices [CANs] in the last few days as part of our standard operating process to ensure the industry is aware of expected demand,\u201d Bramley said.<\/p>\n
Transpower has given notice that the system could again encounter very high demand tomorrow morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this stage we do not anticipate any impact on electricity supply to consumers,\u201d Bramley said.<\/p>\n
Brodie Stone covers crime and emergency for the Northern Advocate. She has spent most of her life in Whang\u0101rei and is passionate about delving into issues that matter to Northlanders and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That had locked polar air in place, and clear skies meant any remaining heat radiated away, and temperatures…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[276001,9526,45290,138,131886,97110,2842,4508,78,18839,1304,3180,111,139,1067,69,1118,381,38666,1961,2044,4998,102,379,12598],"class_list":["post-560843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-02c","tag-another","tag-blast","tag-business","tag-coldest","tag-dipped","tag-experienced","tag-hits","tag-in","tag-kaitia","tag-morning","tag-near","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-northland","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-region","tag-temperatures","tag-this","tag-time","tag-weather","tag-with","tag-year","tag-zero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}