Price decrease for most Lines Charges from 1 April 2022

Despite pressure from increasing costs, from 1 April 2022 our electricity lines charge prices will decrease by an average of 1.5% across most price categories.

Changes to low fixed charge pricing
Last year the Government decided to phase-out the low fixed charge tariff regulations over the next five years. This was one of the key recommendations from the independent Electricity Price Review, aiming to make electricity charges fairer across all households.

Each year for the next five years we will gradually increase the daily fixed charge tariff and decrease the variable tariffs for our residential low user pricing plan. At the end of the five year period the plan will be removed.

For more information you can visit MBIE's website.

In the pipeline
The government recently proposed a number of programmes to help New Zealand reduce its carbon emissions, including the promotion of electric vehicle use. This is likely to increase electricity demand.

Our electricity network has busy times, like roads at rush-hour. If we get more demand than our assets can cope with, we can build a bigger network. Alternatively, we can look for ways to shift electricity demand - like electric vehicle charging - to times when the network is less-busy, and therefore cheaper for consumers. Doing this may avoid or delay the need to build a bigger network and help us continue to keep prices low for our consumers.

Our Electric Vehicle and Battery (EVB) tariff encourages consumers to charge their electric vehicles during our network’s less-busy times. Last year we moved the majority of our residential consumers to ‘Time of Use’ pricing. Like our EVB pricing plan, these prices reward consumers with cheaper prices for using power when the network is less-busy (off-peak times) and have higher prices when the network is busy (peak times). More information about Time of Use Pricing and other types of pricing can be found here.

This year we will be consulting with electricity retailers about other changes to our prices, which are designed to further reward people for using power when our network is less-busy.