Price decreases for lines charges to take effect from 1 April 2020

From 1 April 2020 a 14.6% reduction in our network costs and an 11.4% reduction in Transpower’s lines costs have enabled us to decrease our residential, commercial and street lighting prices.

We have held prices steady for our electric vehicle and household battery storage plan (EVB) which already offers a discounted price for electricity use outside the times when our network is busy (explained further in Introducing New Pricing Options).

Introducing new pricing options
Wellington Electricity has been trialling a new residential “Time of Use” (ToU) pricing option which rewards consumer behaviour with lower charges for using power outside of times when our network is busy (referred to as network congestion or "peak periods").

Instead of having one flat rate for every unit of electricity used (no matter what time of the day), this pricing plan offers consumers cheaper rates when the network is not busy (“off-peak”) and provides a price signal to reduce potential network congestion, with more expensive rates when it is busy (“peak”).

If consumers use power off-peak wherever possible (e.g. to run the washing machine or to charge their electric vehicle), then they could save money on their overall power bill. Wellington Electricity is now making this type of pricing available to all residential consumers. You can check with your electricity retailer whether they will be offering these prices.

In the pipeline
Over the next year, Wellington Electricity will be investigating the following changes:

• Changing residential flat rate pricing to ToU pricing
• Merging EVB and residential ToU pricing
• Introducing discounted pricing options for consumers who allow Wellington Electricity to manage electric vehicle charging and other appliances (for example, moving the time an electric vehicle charge starts and stops so it lowers network congestion).