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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. What is Ourpower?

source: Ourpower

Ourpower is one of the smaller local power companies in NZ.

And Ourpower’s service area is “Hamilton” only.

Because, OurPower is an electricity retail brand of WEL Network (an energy solution company in NZ), and WEL Network coverage area is Hamilton.

Head Office	Hamilton
Operate from	2017
Main Shareholders	100%: Ourpower Holdings Ltd.
Services	Electricity only
Service are	Hamilton only

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 Ourpower?

Based on my research, the 3 advantages of Ourpower are as below.

1. Simple pricing [ 23.5cent per kWh + GST ]
2. Weekly billing
3. No fixed-term contract (and No break fee)

Details of the advantage are as below.

2-1. Simple pricing [ 23.5cent per kWh + GST ]

source: Ourpower

Ourpower has only 1 plan for power.

The price is [ 23.5cent per kWh + GST ] with no daily fixed charge.

So, you need to pay for electricity only as you use it.

source: Ourpower

2-2. Weekly billing

Payment option of Ourpower is weekly billing only.

So, it is easy for you to control payments.

(*) you can not choose monthly bill payment.

If you feel difficult to pay your bill in the future, no worries because you can contact their customer service anytime.

2-3. No fixed-term contract (and No break fee)

Ourpower’s electric plans are “No Fixed-term contract” and no break fee.

So, you can change(switch) to another power company anytime, if you like.

source: Ourpower

3. What is the disadvantages of Ourpower?

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

1. No Gas and No Broadband service
2. There are some power companies with higher customer satisfaction

The details of the disadvantages are as below.

3-1. No Gas and No Broadband service

Ourpower’s plan is only for Electricity.

There is no service for Gas nor Broadband at this moment.

If you need Gas and Broadband too…

The following companies offer Gas and Broadband too, so please check their official websites, if you like.

Power company name	Gas	Broadband
Pulse Energy	✓	✓
Contact Energy	✓	✓
Trustpower	✓	✓
Genesis Energy	✓	–

(*) I recommend “Pulse Energy” among the above 4 companies, because Pulse Energy has better customer satisfaction as explained later.

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 Ourpower’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 Ourpower 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 Ourpower’s advantages and disadvantages, the difference between Ourpower 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.

• Ourpower’s price is very simple – [ 23.5cent per kWh + GST ]
• It is good for you to join Ourpower, if you are highly interested in simple pricing.
• If you are interested in [customer satisfaction] or [cheapest price], it is good for you to check other power companies.

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.