December 11, 2013 11:00am by David Farrar

Mighty River to hold prices for 15 months

Some have scaremongered that moving from an SOE to a mixed ownership model will increase power prices. Well the Herald reports:

MightyRiverPower, the first state-owned power company to be partially privatised by the government this year, plans to keep the price it charges for electricity on hold until at least April 2015, but can’t guarantee transmission and distribution prices won’t rise. …

“However, there will likely be changes in customer pricing from April 1 due to variables over which we have no control that we pass through on our bills – such as transmission and distribution charges and any increases in metering costs due to regulatory requirements.”

So there will be no increase in the price for the actual power.

The way to keep power prices down is to increase competition, not destroy it as Labour/Greens propose. If you look at the Powerswitch website run by Consumer, there is a big difference between what companies charge.

In Auckland the most expensive average price is Mercury at $2,251. Mercury is owned by MRP and its prices are the same as when MRP was an SOE. The cheapest is Contact at $2,018. Contact is 1005 privately owned.
In Wellington the cheapest is Budgie at $2,012 (also owned by MRP) and most expensive is Energy Online at $2,269. Energy Online is owned by Genesis, which is an SOE.
In Canterbury Trustpower is $2,653 and Nova $2,044. Nova is owned by the 100% private Todd Corp. Trustpower is owned by Infratil and Tauranga Energy Consumer Trust.