Price increase for lines charges to take effect from 1 April 2021

From 1 April 2021 our electricity lines charge prices will increase by an average of 5% across all price categories. Lines charges make up about a third of your electricity bill. This coming year’s prices are made up of a 1% increase in Transpower’s lines charges and a 4% increase in our distribution lines charges. We have kept most of our prices unchanged since 2017, until last year, when we reduced the majority of our prices by 14%.

What’s changing?
Like roads at rush-hour, our network has busy times. We could build a larger network to cope with those busy periods and pass those costs on, or we could encourage people to use the network when it is not as busy. We favour the latter, because it helps keep our prices lower over time.

So, we are now making our residential prices more expensive during busy times (weekday mornings and evenings) and cheaper in the less-busy times (midday and night-time on weekdays and all weekend). We call the busy times “peak” and the less busy times “offpeak” and refer to this type of pricing as “Time of Use” (ToU). The Electricity Vehicle & Battery (EVB) and residential ToU plan peak hours are: Monday to Friday (including public holidays) 7:00am – 11:00am, 5:00pm – 9:00pm. The EVB and residential ToU plan off-peak hours are: Monday to Friday (including public holidays) 9:00pm – 7:00am, 11:00am – 5:00pm and all weekend.

We introduced ToU pricing in 2020 as an optional pricing category for retailers and are now applying ToU pricing to all residential consumers who have meters that are capable of measuring electricity consumption by half-hour intervals. Information on how ToU prices are applied and how consumers can benefit from the new prices can be found here on our website.

If you use electricity off-peak or outside the busy times wherever possible (e.g. to run a washing machine or charge an electric vehicle), then you could save money on the lines charges part of your power bill. You can check with your electricity retailer whether they will be offering these prices, or try Consumer’s Powerswitch website to compare retailer prices.

In the pipeline
Over the last year, Wellington Electricity has been working with other electricity industry groups on the concept of ‘Managed Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging’. Managed EV Charging offers discounted pricing options for people who allow Wellington Electricity to move the time an electric vehicle charges so it lowers network congestion and rewards them with cheaper prices. We are planning to introduce this pricing option next year. We have decided to keep the Electricity Vehicle & Battery (EVB) pricing category for the 2021/22 pricing year.

More information about Time of Use Pricing and other types of pricing can be found here.