Kuriger Barbara; Woods MeganBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you. I want to note that last night's increase in demand wasn't far above what would be expected at this time of the year particularly during a snowstorm. In fact we can expect that similar increases in demand will continue to occur next winter and the winter after that or even potentially again this year.My next question to the Minister is: what steps is she taking to make sure this doesn't happen again and that New Zealand can have confidence that when the temperature drops the electricity stays on?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): Just to give some context for the peak demand which was an historical high that we experienced last night it was around 7100 megawatts. We would expect a winter peak in New Zealand historically as being around 6500 to 6700 megawatts. So this was somewhat larger than we had experienced. None the less New Zealanders rightly deserve to know that we have an electric system that has enough generation capacity to cover the fact that we will have a winter storm. The assurance that I can give New Zealanders is that we did have the physical capacity last night for more generation; commercial decisions were made not to bring on-stream some of that generation.BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): A couple more questions for the Minister. The Minister has often talked about a pumped hydro scheme as allowing New Zealand to get to 100 percent renewable and security of supply. The Government however banned oil and gas in 2018 and only after this sought advice on how to replace gas. Can she confirm that officials have told her a pumped hydro scheme will be at least 10 years away and if so can she also confirm that there will be at least 10 more winters before it is built?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): There are several questions in there; I will attempt to answer all of them. In terms of the member talks about pumped hydro I think this is a good opportunity to point out that last night the high-voltage direct current cable which is the cable that transports electricity from the South Island to the North Island was actually only running at about 50 percent capacity. So there was far more capacity on that cable to transport more hydro power across the strait into the North Island to meet the shortfall.In terms of the pumped hydro solution in terms of whether or not that would be a long-term solution what we saw last night actually was the current mix that we have in our system in terms of what our backups are in terms of coal and gas actually not coming and providing that security of supply for New Zealanders. That is why we need to be looking at future solutions such as this Government has made the commitment around pumped hydro. We have always said that this is a long-term project—Hon Member: Time line?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: —and we've been very clear around what the time line of that project is and yes it is around a decade. I think it is a shame that New Zealand had not taken the opportunity a decade ago to start looking at some longer-term solutions for how it is we would have a fit for purpose energy system in New Zealand. I do note that the last time we got into a situation in terms of a similar analogous position was in 2014.