Wellington Electricity Lines

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#995848 27-Feb-2014 21:43

alasta: Averaging over summer and winter I use about 320 kwh per month which costs me about $100. If my daily charge goes up by $1 per day then that's about a 30% increase in my monthly bill, bearing in mind that a small decrease in the unit rate will make stuff all difference in my case.

Considering the budget pressure that some people are under at the moment I'm surprised that this hasn't gained more media attention.

How many times do the media need to prove they're not really capable of much...?

wongtop

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#995866 27-Feb-2014 21:54

alasta: Averaging over summer and winter I use about 320 kwh per month which costs me about $100. If my daily charge goes up by $1 per day then that's about a 30% increase in my monthly bill, bearing in mind that a small decrease in the unit rate will make stuff all difference in my case.

Considering the budget pressure that some people are under at the moment I'm surprised that this hasn't gained more media attention.

If you are using less than about 700 kWh a month and this is your primary place of residence (not a batch or the like) you should look at switching to a low user plan. You pay a lower daily charge (about 40c) but pay a higher per unit rate. It is generally better to be on this kind of plan if you use less than 8000 kWh a year. You would be well under this.

alasta

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#995868 27-Feb-2014 22:01

wongtop:
alasta: Averaging over summer and winter I use about 320 kwh per month which costs me about $100. If my daily charge goes up by $1 per day then that's about a 30% increase in my monthly bill, bearing in mind that a small decrease in the unit rate will make stuff all difference in my case.

Considering the budget pressure that some people are under at the moment I'm surprised that this hasn't gained more media attention.

If you are using less than about 700 kWh a month and this is your primary place of residence (not a batch or the like) you should look at switching to a low user plan. You pay a lower daily charge (about 40c) but pay a higher per unit rate. It is generally better to be on this kind of plan if you use less than 8000 kWh a year. You would be well under this.

Whoops - I now remember switching to a low usage plan about a year ago. I've just checked my latest bill and my daily rate is $0.33. If we assume that my daily rate roughly doubles which appears to be the case for everyone else here then I'd be paying an extra $10 a month which is more manageable but still quite a lot really.

dwl

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#995895 27-Feb-2014 23:13

alasta: Whoops - I now remember switching to a low usage plan about a year ago. I've just checked my latest bill and my daily rate is $0.33. If we assume that my daily rate roughly doubles which appears to be the case for everyone else here then I'd be paying an extra $10 a month which is more manageable but still quite a lot really.

I don't believe that the daily rate on the low use plan can be increased like that as it is governed by regulations here. Of course the power company can adjust the kWhr tariffs and this is the confusing part with the approximate doubling of the daily charge.

We are with Genesis which states "Daily Fixed Charge - This is a cents/day charge covering the fixed cost of your energy supply from the network or lines company plus a cost for metering and billing." which is currently $1.01 + GST. I suspect this statement is misleading as on the Contact Energy website they say the breakdown of costs from the 2009 Ministerial Review had:

Energy - the cost of generating electricity: 36%
Distribution - the cost from lines companies for transporting electricity over local networks between the national grid and your home: 29%
Retail services - charges relating to providing a high standard of service to customers, including Electricity Authority levies -and margin: 14%
Transmission - the costs from Transpower, for transporting electricity over the national grid between power stations and local networks: 8%
Metering - the cost of providing, maintaining and reading electricity meters: 2%

So if the 29% could be attributed to WEL in this case then perhaps Contact are just more accurately reflecting the apportionment. The old and new rates mentioned in the first post calculates out by me to be a 6.1% overall increase with 8000 kWhr/yr (low use threshold) which is close to the Contact Energy stated 6.8% average increase in Wellington / Hutt Valley / Porirua in DomPost. More kWhr/yr should be less increase. I think this gives daily charge about 30% of total bill.

The worrying part is the 6.8% increase is the highest in the country.

Geektastic

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#995902 27-Feb-2014 23:59

wongtop:
sbiddle:
wongtop: Yeah I had the same letter from Mercury. We are not increasing the energy component of the charge blah blah, here's the increase in lines charges. I took the opportunity to jump ship to Meridian. Bracing myself for the same letter from them.

Meridian have already put power up by ~25% in the last year (I know as I'm with them).

I was going to say don't hold your breath. That 25% increase was the reason that I switched to MRP, who then slugged me with a 20% increase which took the electricity prices to more than if I had just stayed with Meridian in the first place. Then the increase which was to take place on 1 April would have made another 5% or so, so I went to Powerswitch and had a look. Looks like I am not going to end up saving much after Meridian's increase.

Its frustrating when you go to the effort to change, only to find that the company you are moving raises its prices a month or two later!

I've said this very thing many times.

All of them should be forced by law to change on the same date, so consumers can properly compare.

Geektastic

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#995903 28-Feb-2014 00:00

Whilst we are on the subject...

WTF is the levy we pay to the Electricity Authority actually doing for us as consumers?

sbiddle

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#995999 28-Feb-2014 08:37

I'm going to drag out old Meridian bills over the weekend to have a look at recent usage. I suspect with the 100% increase in line charges won't be cancelled out by the lower unit charges and will mean an increase of over 3% which they are claiming.

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TinyTim

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#996028 28-Feb-2014 08:52

sbiddle: I'm going to drag out old Meridian bills over the weekend to have a look at recent usage. I suspect with the 100% increase in line charges won't be cancelled out by the lower unit charges and will mean an increase of over 3% which they are claiming.

Break even (new total charge = old total charge) is about 1250 units per month which is about $300 (after discount) (Economy 24 rate).

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#996482 28-Feb-2014 15:37

I have received a letter from Meridian today re Wellington Electricity Lines network charges.
The numbers are presented in a (deliberately?) confusing table which may be summarized as follows:

Fixed daily charges:

network charge: up from 19.17cents to 115.00cents (a 500% increase!)
Meridian charge: unchanged at 95.83 cents
total charge: up from 115.00 cents to 210.83 cents

"We estimate that your bill will increase by 6% over the next year."

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#996544 28-Feb-2014 17:25

WEL Networks in Hamilton is doing the same thing

We're with Contact Energy:

Current Daily Line Charge: 119.9 cents/day
New Daily Line Charge: 203.2 cents/day

Only seeing a 2c/kWh reduction in both Anytime and Economy rates

I just spoke with Contact, we qualify for the Low User plan since we use under 8000 units per year (we avg 6000) which they say will save $95 per years, I've prob just offset the increase

Aredwood

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#996603 28-Feb-2014 19:24

Geektastic: Whilst we are on the subject...

WTF is the levy we pay to the Electricity Authority actually doing for us as consumers?

They run the "whats my number" website and advertising.

In otherwords you have to pay more on your powerbill, just so they can tell you to try and save by switching companies.

dwl

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#996632 28-Feb-2014 19:59

Using rates on the Contact website for our area as of now, and from the PDF for the new rates on the same page, I get increases that should be a maximum of 6.6%. As Contact is saying the average increase may be 6.8% I assume some users are on a standard plan when they may be better off on low usage.

Note the exact same cost for standard and low usage at 8000 kWh/yr. These rates were ex GST without discount.

No promises calculations are accurate but hopefully a guide to how it changes. The 2c difference in c/kWhr rate does substantially offset the daily rate change.

dwl

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#996635 28-Feb-2014 20:07

Aredwood:
Geektastic: Whilst we are on the subject...

WTF is the levy we pay to the Electricity Authority actually doing for us as consumers?

They run the "whats my number" website and advertising.

In otherwords you have to pay more on your powerbill, just so they can tell you to try and save by switching companies.

I assume it is this amount: Electricity Authority Levy of 0.146 cents per kWh. At 8000 kWhr/yr that's $13.40 inc GST no prompt payment discount. While I'd rather not pay it, at 0.5% of my bill it isn't the main concern.

rayonline

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#996651 28-Feb-2014 20:28

I checked Contact the new rates are not yet listed online for Tawa.

I am in Churton Park. We went to Genesis for a few years now. I just updated my spreadsheet as of 8 days ago with the current (old) rates. Contact has always been more expensive if you go with their rates including the 10% off prompt payment discount if you pay at the post shop. They do provide 22% if you make online payments and have online invoices only but with the 22% they are within a few dollars to Genesis who provide 10% off, to me Contact was a few dollars more expensive than Genesis still with the same days per month and same kW units consumed. The thing is of course if you forget about a single month online invoice you lose that 22% discount could be massive.

Genesis we are on $1.01 and 23.5c per kW this is their anytime plan. Not had their increae letter yet, we did get the lock into contract with a slight increase not as much as you but I was led to believe that this year the electricity price increases won't be significant so your letter surprises me. $2.00 that's commercial daily rates ........... My parents used to have a shop in Tawa as of 2013 the daily rate was $2.20.

rayonline

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#996697 28-Feb-2014 21:27

kiwitrc: I am on Genesis in Tawa and pay $1.01/day , maybe I better sign up for the 2 year deal with Genesis after all!

I asked about something similar in the past and they said that there are fineprints around when rates can still be altered within reason.

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