Power has been restored to 80,000 customers after a lightning strike earlier on Thursday.
About 80 thousand homes and businesses in Napier, Hastings and Gisborne were affected from about 4pm.
The cause of the outage was simultaneous lightning strikes on two of the major transmission circuits leading into Hawke's Bay. These run on a set of pylons between Wairakei and Napier.
The strike happened about 50km south-east of Taupo. The transmission line was not damaged but the power surge from the lightning caused it to trip, Transpower says.
