Electricity has been restored to all but a handful of Christchurch homes hit by a major power cut.
About 30,000 customers in northern areas were initially affected by a fault on a main line about 9.30pm on Wednesday.
The power failure stretched across the north and north west of the city, from Belfast to Lyttelton and Burnside to Shirley.
Lines company Orion said the fault was on the on a high-voltage 66kV line that runs Islington and Papanui.
Electricty was restored to customers by switching supply from other parts of the network to the affected area.
Chief executive Rob Jamieson said it was a rare type of failure and crews workrf in the dark to restore power within a few hours.
The cause of the outage would not be known until the high-voltage line was able to be examined in daylight.
