The Commerce Commission has published its latest one-page summaries of key performance measures for each of New Zealand’s 29 electricity lines companies, covering the year to 31 March 2017.

As regulated utilities, lines companies are required to publicly disclose key performance information under Part 4 of the Commerce Act.

The performance summaries cover a lines company’s performance in areas including profitability, capital and operating expenditure, revenue, network reliability, and asset condition including for lines, poles, and substations.

The performance summaries are available on the Commission’s website.

Background

Regulation of electricity lines companies

As monopoly utilities, all 29 of the country’s electricity lines companies are regulated by the Commerce Commission under Part 4 of the Commerce Act. This requires each to publicly disclose information on its performance. 17 of the 29 also have price limits and quality standards set by the Commission. Price limits determine the maximum revenue the company can collect from customers, while quality is measured in power outages. If a lines company breaches its quality standards (eg, asset degradation leads to more outages on its networkthan is allowed), it may face prosecution under the Commerce Act. The remaining 12 lines companies are exempt from price-quality regulation as they are consumer-owned.