REG_028: Electricity Authority (2025) — Improving pricing plan options for consumers: Time-varying retail pricing for…

REG_028: Electricity Authority (2025) — Improving pricing plan options for consumers: Time-varying retail pricing for…

Source

https://www.ea.govt.nz/projects/all/energy-competition-task-force/ — original source (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)

Electricity Authority (2025) — Improving Pricing Plan Options for Consumers: Time-Varying Retail Pricing (Task Force 2B/2C decision)

Enacted EA decision (16 July 2025) requiring large retailers (>5% market share) to offer at least one time-varying pricing plan for BOTH electricity consumption and injection — the retail-side companion to the 2A distribution-rebate decision REG_005. It is the regulatory precondition behind the "1 July 2026 time-varying buy-back reform" that CR_011 relies on.

Decision paper for Energy Competition Task Force initiatives 2B (require time-varying consumption pricing) and 2C (better reward consumers for supplying power). Amends the Code so large retailers must offer time-varying plans to residential + small-business customers with a communicating smart meter, publish them on their website and any prescribed comparison platform, and (if non-compliant = “Category B”) promote and quarterly-report on them by 1 October 2026. Distribution-billing changes force distributors to bill on TOU (from 1 Apr 2026) and retailers to submit granular data (from 1 Jul 2026). ⚠ Contains NO buy-back rates or cost figures — it is a mandate/mechanism, not a rate source; the actual injection prices are set by retailers and stay sourced for NI from CR_011 / URL_014. Read verbatim via pdftotext → data_quality: verified.

Summary

The Electricity Authority Te Mana Hiko’s decision paper Improving pricing plan options for consumers: Time-varying retail pricing for electricity consumption and supply (16 July 2025) enacts Energy Competition Task Force initiatives 2B and 2C — the retail-side counterpart to the 2A distribution-rebate decision (REG_005), published the same day. It amends the Electricity Industry Participation Code so that large retailers (those with more than 5% market share of ICPs) must make available at least one time-varying pricing plan — defined as one whose rates vary by when consumption or injection occurs and that rewards patterns that reduce system costs — for both consumption and injection, offered to all residential and small-business customers with a communicating smart meter and published on their website and any comparison platform the Authority prescribes. Retailers already doing this stay “Category A” with no further obligation; the rest (“Category B”) must offer, promote and quarterly-report on such plans by 1 October 2026, with “material progress” expected before 1 July 2026 or additional regulation follows. Separately, the decision amends distribution billing so distributors bill on time-of-use where they offer it (from 1 April 2026) and retailers supply sufficiently granular data (from 1 July 2026). The rules carry a sunset clause (expire 30 June 2031).

For this project the paper’s value is qualitative and forward-looking: it is the enacted precondition that makes time-varying injection (buy-back) plans broadly available across the NZ retail market — the “reform” CR_011 points to — but it sets no rates (those remain retailer-determined and exogenous). It complements REG_005 to complete the injection-value picture: 2A pays the distributor-side avoided-cost rebate to retailers, and 2B/2C obliges retailers to pass a time-varying signal (and the buy-back) through to consumers. It resolves the document-retrieval half of RT_220; the per-distributor Network Tasman injection rate it references remains an open gap.

Key claims

- claim: "The Authority has decided to amend the Code so that large retailers must (a) offer time-varying pricing plans to consumers for electricity use and supply, and (b) make these plans available on their websites and any electricity plan comparison platform prescribed by the Authority (where the platform is capable of presenting them). 'Large retailers' means retailers with more than 5% market share. Large retailers that have not made material progress in offering time-varying pricing plans before 1 July 2026 will be subject to further regulation, including additional promotion requirements and quarterly reporting; the rule changes ensure most consumers will have more flexible pricing plans to choose from by 1 October 2026. This paper enacts Task Force Initiatives 2B and 2C; a separate parallel paper enacts Initiative 2A (distributor rebate)."
  source_location: "Executive summary, pp.2–3; §2.3–2.5; footnote 1 (>5% market share)"
- claim: "Retailers are categorised Category A or Category B based on whether they meet the criteria before 1 July 2026. Category A = retail traders with less than 5% market share of all ICPs on the previous 30 June, OR with 5%+ share that already provide residential and small-business customers one or more time-varying price plan for consumption and injection AND advertise them via website + any prescribed comparison platform. All other 5%+ retailers are Category B and must offer time-varying price plans and meet promotion and reporting requirements by 1 October 2026. A retailer can be Category B for consumption but not injection, and vice versa. Once a Category B retailer meets the requirements for a year it becomes Category A; a Category A retailer that stops meeting the criteria is reclassified Category B."
  source_location: "§2.6–2.12; Appendix A cl.11A.2 (category A / category B definitions)"
- claim: "Category B retailers must offer time-varying price plans, for both consumption and injection, to all residential and small business customers that have a communicating smart meter. A 'time-varying price plan' is defined as a plan whose rates for electricity supplied to the customer (a) vary in respect of consumption or injection depending on when that consumption or injection occurs, and (b) vary in a way that provides a reward (financial benefit) for consumption and injection patterns that reduce pressure on system costs. Category B retailers must publish the plans on their website and any prescribed comparison platform, notify eligible customers via the annual Consumer Care Obligations (CCO) notice, and provide quarterly reports to the Authority (plan name and customer numbers, structure and prices, changes, how prices relate to underlying costs, target customers, and uptake targets vs actual)."
  source_location: "§2.14–2.18; Appendix A cl.1.1 (definition of time-varying pricing plan)"
- claim: "Distribution billing changes (Table 1): distributors must charge in accordance with time-varying charges where they offer them and where the consumer has a communicating smart meter — starting 1 April 2026; retailers must submit information to distributors granular enough to invoice accurately for all ICPs with complete and accurate data — starting 1 July 2026; distributors must charge retailers using the data they receive — starting 1 July 2026. These are amended from the consultation proposal to make compliance easier and less costly, and aggregated data may be used to settle distribution bills."
  source_location: "§2.19–2.20; Table 1 (Summary of new Code requirements); §6 (aggregated data)"
- claim: "Origin: the Authority and the Commerce Commission jointly established the Energy Competition Task Force in the context of the August 2024 fuel shortage and sustained high wholesale electricity prices (MBIE as observers). This decision relates to two package-two initiatives: require retailers to offer time-varying consumption pricing (2B) and require retailers to better reward consumers for supplying power (2C), acting in concert with Initiative 2A (require distributors to pay when consumers supply power) to signal and reward consumption/injection behaviours that reduce system costs and ultimately reduce the need for generation and network (poles-and-wires) investment."
  source_location: "§3.4–3.8; footnotes 3–4"
- claim: "Market baseline motivating the intervention: the consultation analysis showed around 19% of all price plans in the market are time-of-use (the main form of time-varying plan), a proportion that had not materially changed over the six years for which data was held. With the exception of Contact Energy, the largest retailers do not routinely offer consumers a time-varying price plan. Most retailers offer only a single fixed price for all electricity injected, regardless of when injection occurs; only three smaller retailers are known to offer more dynamic (time-varying) injection plans."
  source_location: "§3.9–3.11; §4.31 (three small retailers offer granular injection pricing)"
- claim: "The Authority received 142 submissions and 10 cross-submissions on its February 2025 consultation paper, from consumers / distributed-generation owners (85 written + 13 consumer-survey responses), distributors, retailers and other stakeholders. During consultation, Rewiring Aotearoa ran a submission campaign and released consultation guides and templates: 49 submissions used its simple four-bullet template and 29 largely followed its more detailed template."
  source_location: "§3.18 (Table 2); §3.20"
- claim: "The new Code amendments include a sunset clause: the rules categorising retailers (Category A and B designations and associated requirements) will expire on 30 June 2031 and no longer apply from that date. The Authority preferred a sunset clause over a formal review clause because it better reflects the temporary, short-term drivers of the issue and the risk of the requirements becoming out-dated as the market evolves. (Appendix A redline shows the expiry date amended from 31 December 2030 to 30 June 2031.)"
  source_location: "§2.13; §6.84–6.86; Appendix A (expiry clause)"
- claim: "Injection rationale and design: the Authority identified a 'chicken and egg' problem — few consumers can respond to granular injection signals, but the absence of such signals suppresses investment in the capability. It acknowledges the number of customers who could benefit from time-varying injection plans is currently small, but holds that solar and storage adoption is accelerating and that flat injection rates undervalue distributed generation, leading to inefficient investment. The rule allows a diversity of injection pricing (spot-based OR more stable/predictable), with within-day price signals treated as particularly important given the daily solar cycle and the effect of a battery. In parallel, the 2A decision requires distributors' pricing methodologies to include negative charges for peak injection (reflecting the long-run marginal cost of avoidable peak demand) from the pricing year beginning 1 April 2026, and the Authority is separately consulting on multiple trading relationships (its Evolving Multiple Trading and Switching project), which would let a consumer use different retailers for consumption vs injection."
  source_location: "§4.31–4.46; §5.29(d) (multiple trading relationships); §4.44(a) (parallel 2A, 1 April 2026)"

Neobiome Intelligence relevance

• Enacted precondition for time-varying injection buy-back plans (D01). This decision is the regulatory anchor behind the market shift CR_011 summarises as the “1 July 2026 reform mandating time-varying buy-back from all large retailers”: it obliges every retailer with >5% market share to make available at least one time-varying plan for injection as well as consumption, offered to residential + small-business customers with a communicating smart meter. For NI’s export economics it validates that the higher peak buy-back rates the model may apply (e.g. the Octopus 23 c/kWh peak in URL_014) will be broadly available rather than a single-retailer niche — the retail-side complement to the 2A distributor rebate (REG_005). REG_028
• ⚠ Mechanism, NOT a rate source — do not extract a price from this paper. The decision sets no c/kWh buy-back or cost figures; the actual injection prices remain exogenous (each retailer’s plan, still sourced for NI by CR_011 / URL_014). Its NI content is qualitative and calendar-based: availability by 1 October 2026 (Category B) with material progress by 1 July 2026, distribution-side TOU billing from 1 April 2026, retailer data + distributor billing from 1 July 2026. Same status as REG_005 (enacted basis, firm values exogenous). REG_028
• Reinforces treating injection revenue as a MINOR stream for a self-consuming community (D01/I01). As with the 2A rebate, the reward only accrues to surplus injected at peak; the Authority itself notes the pool of customers who benefit is “currently small” and frames the reform as improving signals to get ahead of investment, not as a large standalone return. A Neobiome community whose design goal is to minimise grid interaction and self-consume should weight this near-negligibly unless it deliberately exports at peak — consistent with the REG_005 calibration (~6/yr self-consuming vs ~175/yr heavy-export household battery). REG_028
• Market-structure baseline for the NZ retail layer (D01). Only ~19% of NZ price plans are time-of-use (flat for six years); apart from Contact Energy the largest retailers do not routinely offer them; most offer a single fixed injection rate and only three small retailers offer dynamic injection pricing. This is why time-varying buy-back is not yet the default and why NI must model the transition to it (pre- vs post-2026), not assume it as already universal. REG_028

Key thesis insights

• A short-term, targeted regulatory nudge rather than structural reform. The Authority chose a “comply-or-be-regulated” design (Category A retailers already offering plans face no new obligation; only Category B are compelled) with a sunset clause (2031) — an explicit, time-boxed intervention while “bigger, long-term improvements to the electricity market” proceed. A clean NZ instance of light-touch, role-preserving regulation of a decentralising energy system, and a companion to the political-economy story in REG_004 and REG_005. REG_028
• Regulation getting “ahead of investment” in distributed generation. The Authority explicitly reasons that it should send accurate injection price signals before mass adoption of solar + batteries + V2G, accepting the beneficiary group is small today because adoption is accelerating — a governance choice to shape (not merely follow) the distributed-energy transition. REG_028
• An organised, engaged community-energy constituency. 142 submissions, a Rewiring Aotearoa campaign (78 template-based submissions), and named community-energy submitters (Nelson Tasman Climate, Community Energy Taranaki, Lightforce Solar, SEANZ) show an active NZ constituency shaping distributed/retail energy policy — the same pilot-region interest visible in REG_005. REG_028

Research targets

Resolved

• RT_220 (RESOLVED → this page): the EA decision on Energy Competition Task Force initiatives 2B & 2C (retailers to offer time-varying pricing plans for consumption and injection + improved distribution billing) — the retail-side companion to REG_005. The document RT_220 sought is now held and read verbatim. ⚠ Note the residual: RT_220’s row anticipated that “the per-distributor Network Tasman injection rate folds in here once published” — this paper sets the mandate, not any rate, so that per-distributor value is NOT delivered here (it stays on the existing REG_005 gap, below).

Research gaps

• (continues an existing REG_005 gap — do NOT create a duplicate RT) The Network Tasman time-varying injection negative-charge rate (c/kWh, peak window) under its 1 April 2026 pricing methodology — the pilot-distributor value of the avoided-cost-of-distribution credit; still not published in either the 2A or 2B/2C decision. Already tracked as REG_005’s research gap (REG_005); annotate there rather than raise a new RT.

Notes

Primary regulatory decision paper (Electricity Authority Te Mana Hiko, 16 July 2025), 56 pp A4, read verbatim via pdftotext -layout — every quantitative claim (thresholds, dates, submission counts, the 19% TOU figure) traces to a numbered paragraph, Table 1, or Appendix A → data_quality: verified. Enacted Code amendment (new Part 11A), effective on the staged dates above.

⚠ Date typo in the raw: §1.1 refers to “our February 2026 consultation paper” — this should read February 2025 (the exec summary and §3.4/§3.9 all cite the Feb 2025 consultation, and the decision itself is 16 July 2025). Recorded as year: 2025.

⚠ Submission-count difference vs REG_005: this 2B/2C paper reports 142 submissions + 10 cross-submissions (§3.18); the parallel 2A paper (REG_005) reported 138 + 10. They are two separate decision papers consulted in parallel — not a conflict, and the small delta is expected.

⚠ Appendix A is a redline (tracked changes): it shows superseded consultation dates (e.g. “1 January 2026” struck through) and the expiry amended from “31 December 2030” to “30 June 2031”. The operative final dates are taken from the decision body (§2 + Table 1), which are authoritative; the redline is retained only as the enacted Code text.

Connections

Links to

Sources (4): CR_011 · REG_004 · REG_005 · URL_014

Referenced by

EDT domains (1): D01: Renewable Energy & Storage Systems

Sources (1): REG_005