The energy unleashed in the Kaikoura earthquake was equivalent to what could power Christchurch for an entire year.
That's according to a Canterbury University physics PhD student who calculated the energy release of the November 14 quake and the combined energy of those that had preceded it since 2010.
John Holdaway's model showed that the earthquake's energy release was nearly half that of every quake since 2010 combined.
He sourced the data from the GeoNet database and then used a decades-old formula to relate the magnitudes of earthquakes and their aftershocks from each year to a total energy release.
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