Why our electricity bills are so high in New Zealand.

May 23, 2009 by
Filed under: Cost of living, Life in New Zealand 

It’s all relative – these bills being substantially cheaper than a UK electricity bill – but hey – it still hurts. It seems though that the electricity generation companies in New Zealand (owned by the State) have been overcharging for several years to the tune of an eye-watering $4.4Bn. That’s $4,400,000,000. 440 times the amount of money “stolen” from Westpac by the now infamous Rotorua Petrol Station owners.

One major difference is that the petrol station runaways are being hunted down by Interpol and Westpac is after the money back – whereas the Electricity generators look like they are going to get away scot free with fleecing the New Zealand public.
mad

Basically what has happened is that when there has been a “dry Year” or drought conditions – the generators have put up their “spot prices” for electricity. This is the amount of money that the retail electricity companies pay to the generators (and pass the cost on to us plebs). The prices have then stayed high when conditions get better.

The electricity companies are swearing blind that this is not happening – but hey – would you believe them???

Either way –I think they should pay us back the extra and stop charging such hideous rates. Especially as they all State Owned Companies – they shouldn’t actually be making huge profits anyway – its not as if they are actually using the money to improve services to most of their customers. Besides – dont they know theres a financial crisis on??? And yet the prices are still going up!

Rant for the day over.

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Comments

One Comment on Why our electricity bills are so high in New Zealand.

  1. William Knight on Tue, 26th May 2009 12:15 pm

    2. I don’t know why people get so surprised at the profiteering by once-state-run businesses, when governments, at least in NZ and the UK, have failed to create truly competitve markets.

    The UK suffers from Power, Rail and Water, profiteering and in NZ the power companies are doing the same thing.

    They are all bankers, at heart.

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