A major power cut in the upper North Island has affected homes, businesses and traffic between Waikato and Northland.
Power was cut between Huntly and Whangarei after an outage at a transmission line south of Auckland, believed to have been caused by a fire beneath the transmission line in Tamahere, about 9km southeast of Hamilton, Radio New Zealand reported.
Power to Auckland was cut to about 5000 homes by lines company Northpower at the request of Transpower.
Transpower expected the situation to return to normal about 7pm, Radio New Zealand reported.
A police northern communications spokeswoman said Auckland, Counties Manukau and the North Shore were affected.
Traffic lights were affected by the outage, and police were identifying major intersections and deploying staff to direct traffic, police northern communications Inspector Chris Robinson said.
Twitter users in West Auckland, Point Chevalier, Morningside and Manurewa said they were not affected by the power cut.
