The Commerce Commission sets how much we can spend on operating our electricity distribution network. This includes ongoing maintenance costs, the cost to replace aging assets, power restoration, business and network support costs, and vegetation management.

The Commission also sets how much we can spend on building new network capacity to support new connections and increasing electricity use.

This is known as an electricity lines price-quality path and it's done every five years. It's our responsibility, as the network operator, to work within the spending limits during that five-year period. We get penalised for overspending and rewarded for making savings.

There are limited circumstances where we can apply to the Commerce Commission asking to spend more. Examples of when we can do this include:

• building a bigger network for unexpected large new customer connections
• innovation projects that could provide consumers with long-term cost savings or improved network reliability
• repairing the network following a natural disaster like a major storm or earthquake.

This page provides the applications we've made to spend more (since 2024) and the customer benefits that will be provided.