More than 100,000 New Zealanders can’t keep warm in their homes over winter as they struggle to afford heating and pay their power bills.

Brian from Mount Roskill

Which companies offer hardship discounts?
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Only a few power companies provide discounts for customers facing hardship, according to a survey conducted for this series by Common Grace.

Mercury said it excluded 135 households from the April 1 price increase and froze their prices. It supported about 2000 customers a month experiencing financial hardship. Globug, owned by Mercury, gave the same answer.

Contact has its “HandUp programme”, which it says gave individual payment options and discounted energy to customers in need. It said it also offered short-term energy credits for customers needing immediate relief, and full debt forgiveness to clear long-term, unmanageable debt.
“In 2024, this programme assisted 3500 households, and in the last year, almost $500k of support has been offered.”

Genesis, and now-defunct Frank, pointed to the Power Shout scheme, wherein 328,830 hours of free power were supplied to 4205 vulnerable customers.

Toast, a not-for-profit social retailer, has up to 300 customers who have been referred by its community partners specifically for discounted power.
“Toast provides them with all-year lower pricing than their previous retailer and also aims to discount their tariffs by 30% over winter months. They estimate these discounts will amount to $70,000 off standard Toast tariffs during winter 2025,” the company said.

The remaining companies that responded to the survey said they did not provide discounted power.

Meridian said, “In our experience, discounts are not the way to help people transition out of energy hardship.”
Meridian has its Energy Wellbeing Programme. It provides customers with budgeting support, in-home assessments and tailored support to make their homes healthier, easier and cheaper to heat.
“In some cases, this involves providing items like curtains, insulation, or heat pumps. With more than 2500 households already assisted, we have found this to be a far more sustainable solution.”

Pulse did not offer discounts for hardship: “Our priority is to keep electricity pricing as low as we can for all customers. This year, as an example, from 1 April we only flowed through changes in network services charges and did not change our energy rates.”

Nova said it did not offer discounts for hardship, preferring to work through its support teams.

Ecotricity did not offer discounted power, but was “committed to supporting customers in hardship by offering flexible payment options, working closely with them to manage arrears and connecting them with external support services where appropriate”.

Electric Kiwi pointed to its daily free hour of power. Pre-pay service Wise said it did not offer discounted power to people in hardship because that was difficult to define.

Switch Utilities said it did not offer hardship discounts because the issue was “wider than those in immediate hardship”.
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