Powershop｜Is it the best power company in NZ for you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. What is Powershop?

source: Powershop

Powershop is one of the popular smaller power companies, and Powershop is one of “the best customer satisfaction” based on the survey by Consumer NZ in 2020.

Powershop buys electricity in the wholesale electricity market and supplies it to their customers.

(*) 100% share of Powershop is owned by Meridian Energy (one of the 5 biggest power companies in NZ), so you don’t need to worry about Powershop, if it is the first time for you to get to know it.

Head Office	Wellington
Operate from	2009
Main Shareholders	100%: Meridian Energy Ltd
Services	Electricity only
Service area	All of NZ
Customer (electricity)	around 95,000 customers
Number of employee	over 200 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 Powershop?

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

1. Achieved “Best customer satisfaction” in 2021.
2. You can get guaranteed $150 savings over the first year
3. Award winning customer service

Details of the advantage are as below.

2-1. Achieved “Best customer satisfaction” in 2021.

source: Powershop

Powershop is the winner of the CANSTAR BLUE and PEOPLE’S CHOICE (by Consumer NZ) in 2021.

(*) CANSUTER BLUE is a customer satisfaction research and ratings business who’s core purpose is to help consumers make better purchasing decisions

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

Actually the customer satisfaction of Powershop is the best among the major power companies in NZ based on the survey of Consumer NZ.

source: Consumer NZ

So, I believe that you can enjoy Powershop’s customer service with no problem.

(As you can see from the above graph, some of the “big5” are under the average of the electric industry.)

2-2. You can get guaranteed $150 savings over the first year

source: Powershop

Powershop will give you a $150 savings over the first year.

【Before a contract with Powershop】
If you send your electric bill within 3 months from a current power company, Powershop will calculate the guaranteed savings for you.

【After a contract with Powershop】
If you can not get at least $150 savings over the 1 year, Powershop will give you the additional savings to meet at least $150 savings. (This means “Guaranteed Savings”)

But, before you join Powershop, I recommend that you need to know the followings based on Terms and conditions of Powershop. (for examples are below.)

(*) Guaranteed Savings will only be offered against retailers with published rates; we will not guarantee savings against Competitors’ Bills where the rates in those bills are based on real time spot market pricing.

(*) Please note that in calculating your Guaranteed Savings, we will exclude any additional incentives competitors may offer such as sign-up credits, but will include any Powershop sign-up credit offered during your first year. If you’ve met these terms and conditions, and you haven’t saved at least $150 with us, then we’ll put a credit on your account to make good on our guarantee.

3. What is the disadvantages of Powershop?

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

1. No Gas and No Broadband service
2. A bank account direct debit, Credit card or Debit card, only

The details of the disadvantages are as below.

3-1. No Gas and No Broadband service

If you need Gas and/or Broadband together (as a set plan / as a bundle plan), Electric Kiwi does not suit for you, because of no gas and broadband service.

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. A bank account direct debit, Credit card or Debit card, only

The payment method of Powershop are the following 3 options.

• A bank account direct debit
• Credit card
• Debit card

So, you can not pay using a bank transfer.

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

If you want to check the cheapest plan for you, I recommend that you should use “Powerswitch“.

Because Powerswich is a non-profit organisation, so Powerswich gives you the cheapest plan fairly.

4-1. [Cheapest price]・・Use “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“.

4-2. Comparison table of the most popular 10 power companies in NZ

It’s good for you to get to know the difference between Powershop 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 Powershop‘s advantages and disadvantages, the difference between Powershop 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.

• Powershop is No.1 power company of customer satisfaction in 2021.
• Powershop provide only Power(Electricity)

If you want to get to know the cheapest plan, I recommend that you shoud use “Powerswitch“.

Many thanks to read this page.

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