Registry offers faster power switches

By CHRIS DANIELS energy writer

Electricity retailers are hoping a new computerised customer registry launched today will end frustrating delays in switching consumers from one supplier to another.

The new register, the introduction of which has been delayed by computer glitches, will record the physical address of every electricity meter and be the official record of which power retailer is supplying electricity to that connection.

If a retailer "wins over" a new customer, it will deal only with the register, not having to swap the necessary information with a competing company, which has little incentive to make life easy for rivals.

Last month 15,423 consumers switched electricity supplier, which is less than 1 per cent of all energy users.

Difficulties in switching retailers has plagued the New Zealand electricity industry since it became possible for consumers to choose their retailer in 1999.

In what proved to be a messy scramble for new business, retailers went hell for leather in signing up new customers, only to find they did not have the systems needed to service them properly.

Thousands of consumers who then decided to switch went for months without being billed, as the power companies set about obstructing one another in their attempts to win new customers and retain their existing ones.

Other homeowners were switched without permission and others had their power cut off for not paying bills to companies that they never knew had taken over their power supply.

Many of the problems stemmed from the ad-hoc methods of transferring customer information between rival firms and the lack of a well-maintained register of electricity connections.

John Foote, general manager of retail for Mercury Energy, the retail arm of state-owned Mighty River Power, said customers wanting to switch should have fewer problems now that the new registry was in place.

He said that switching in the past had been complicated by the different methods used by the various companies to store information about their customers.

"The problem was there were different views of spellings, about all sorts of things.

"The customer thought they lived in such and such a street, but the system that the other retailer had, had them at a slightly different address," said Foote.

"If they did not match, then the whole switch would get rejected."

Power retailers will spend the next few weeks putting all their data onto the new register and checking their systems can operate properly with the database.

The actual switching process on the new system for customers will be available in two weeks' time.

Further reading
Feature: Electricity

Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority