GLOBUG｜Is it the best NZ power company for you?

This page give you the best answers for the following questions;

• What is GLOBUG?
• What kinds of services GLOBUG is offering?
• Should I made a contract with the GLOBUG for power/electricity?
• What is advantages and disadvantages of GLOBUG?

This page is the best for you to understand about these types of questions.

I’m going to explain about GLOBUG one by one as below.

1. What is GLOBUG?
2. What is the advantages of GLOBUG?
3. What is the disadvantages of GLOBUG?
4. Which power company is the best for you?【plus comparison table】

If you read this page, you can easily understand what GLOBUG is and whether GLOBUG is the best company for you or not.

1. What is GLOBUG?

source: GLOBUG

GLOBUG is one of the popular smaller power companies.

CLOBUG’s electric plan is “Prepaid” service, and most of the power companies in NZ do not offer prepaid electric service.

Also GLOBUG is owned by Mercury Energy (one of the 5 biggest power companies), so you don’t need to worry about GLOBUG.

Head Office	Auckland
Operate from	2013
Main Shareholders	Ultimate holding company: Mercury NZ Ltd.
Services	Electricity only.
Service are	All of NZ
Customer (electricity)	Around 25,000 customers
Number of employee	Around 30 employees

Top5 power companies (“Big5”) in New Zealand

Company name	Customer (ICP count*)	Market share (ICP share)
Genesis Energy	490,000	22%
Contact Energy	420,000	19%
Meridian Energy	340,000	15%
Mercury NZ	330,000	15%
Trustpower	270,000	12%

(*) ICP (Installation Control Point) : Each property has a unique ICP number identifying it on the New Zealand electricity network.
(*) ICP count : the total number of ICP

(source: Electricity Authority, as of March 2021)

2. What is the advantages of GLOBUG?

Based on my research, the 2 advantages of GLOBUG are as below.

1. Easy to get to know how much saving you can get.
2. You can top-up from “$10” anytime

Details of the advantage are as below.

2-1. Easy to get to know how much saving you can get.

source: GLOBUG

If you tell GLOBUG about your energy usage for every 12 months, you can get to know how much savings you can get.

GLOBUG’s 2 electric plans

You need to choose [Low user plan] or [Standard user plan].

	Low user plan	Standard user plan
Fixed daily charge	Lower	Higher
Unit rate	Higher	Lower
It’s good for	1 or 2 person Small energy efficient homes	3 or more people Houses that use many electric heating equipments
Your usage for 1year	Less than 8000 kWh/year (9000 for those in the South Island)	More than 8000 kWh/year (9000 for those in the South Island)

source: GLOBUG

2-2. You can top-up from “$10” anytime

source: GLOBUG

You can top-up from $10 anytime, so you never get a hundreds of dollars bill.

And, you can top-up Online, App, and Store, and you have to pay top-up fees. (The details are as below.)

source: GLOBUG

3. What is the disadvantages of GLOBUG?

Based on my research, the 2 disadvantage of GLOBUG are as below.

1. If your balance become lower than $10, you may get disconnected.
2. There are some power companies with higher customer satisfaction

The details of the disadvantages are as below.

3-1. If your balance become lower than $10, you may get disconnected.

If your account balance become less than $10, you have to top-up (add) before 11am on the next day.

If you missed to top-up before 11am on the next day, you can not use any electricity from GLOBUG until you top-up.

source: GLOBUG

So, you have to keep your account balance more than $10 to keep using electricity everyday.

3-2. There are some power companies with higher customer satisfaction

As far as I tried, I could not find any survey and data about GLOBUG’s customer satisfaction in 2021.

But, based on the survey “Customer Satisfaction with power companies” by Consumer NZ in 2021, “Powershop” is No.1 among major power companies in NZ.

(*) Consumer NZ is an independent, non-profit organisation to offer New Zealanders a fairer deal and established in 1959.

source: Consumer NZ

There is no prepaid service by Powershop, but please check Powershop’s website, if you like.

So I’ll explain about Powershop in the next chapter.

4. Which power company is the cheapest for you?【plus comparison table】

It is important to think about [customer satisfaction] or [cheapest price in the area you live in], when you choose a power company.

I recommend that you should choose a company

• [Best customer satisfaction]・・”Powershop“.
• [Cheapest price finding tool]・・”Powerswitch“

Also, I’ll show you a comparison table of the most popular 10 power companies in NZ at the end of this part.

4-1. [Best customer satisfaction] ・・”Powershop”

source: Powershop

Powershop is a smaller power company, and No.1 customer satisfaction among major power companies in NZ in 2021 based on the survey by Consumer NZ.

I believe that you can enjoy price and service by Powershop, because Based on the survey, the score of “value for money” is 63% (this score is much higher than average of the electric industry).

Also, Meridian Energy (one of the 5 biggest power company in NZ) owned 100% share of Powershop, so you don’t need to worry about Powershop.

It’s good for you to check Powershop’s official website.

Head Office	Wellington
Operate from	2009
Main Shareholders	100%: Meridian Energy
Service	Electricity only
Service area	All of NZ
Customer	around 95,000 customers
Number of employee	Over 200 employees

4-2. [Cheapest price finding tool]・・”Powerswitch”

Powerswitch is the best way for you to find the cheapest electric plan.

source: Powerswitch

Powerswitch is the best website in New Zealand to find which power company and pricing plan is the cheapest for you.

What you have to do is just to input some information (your address, number of your family, type of heating products/systems you use and etc), then you can get to know the cheapest plan.

For example, the result will come up as a list such as the following image.

source: Powerswitch

So, it’s very easy to understand that which company and plan you should choose.

(*) If you want to know more details about Powerswith, please check another page “What is POWERSWITCH? The best way to find the cheapest electricity plan“.

4-3. Comparison table of the most popular 10 power companies in NZ

It’s good for you to get to know the difference between GLOBUG and other popular electric providers.

(*) You can scroll the following chart left to right.

source: Electricity Authority (as of March 2021)

6. Summary

Until here, I explained about GLOBUG‘s advantages and disadvantages, the difference between GLOBUG and other main power companies in NZ – is it useful for you?

As a summary, I write down about the main points of this page as below.

• GLOBUG’s electric plans are “Prepaid”
• It is good for you to get to know how much you can get savings easily.
• It is ok for you about not-prepaid, I recommend to check “Powershop” first.

So, I recommend the following power companies and website, so please check it !!

• “Powershop“・・・Best customer satisfaction among the NZ’s major power companies.
• “Powerswitch“・・・You can get to know the cheapest electric plan in the area you live in.

Many thanks to read this page.

Please let your family and friends about this page, if you like.