New Zealand producers' input and output prices fell in the second quarter of this year as dairy prices declined.

Local govts and power companies are to blame for NZ's inflation rate being much higher than it should have been for the past 10 years, writes Bernard Hickey.

An Air New Zealand flight was struck by lightning two minutes before it was due to land in Auckland this morning.

Those in the industry have a nice phrase to describe the obfuscation involved in the pricing complexity of power bills: Elec-Trickery.

Susan Edmunds asked experts for their top power-saving tips to put more money in your pocket this winter.

A new way of monitoring electricity prices - which calculates what people are actually paying for their power - shows consumers faced a 2.3 per cent hike in the past year.

Tonight will be the third cold night without power for thousands of households as more stormy conditions continue to batter the top of the North Island.

Thousands of people are still without power across the north following a severe storm which battered the country over the past two days.

Keeping chickens and growing your own veges is the first step to being self-sufficient.

India's ambition to skip a generation of electricity technology starting with solar panels on telecommunications towers is being hampered by dust and urban sprawl.

This winter was not a good one for farmers in the Fertile Crescent.

Wild weather is hardly unexpected this time of the year. Aucklanders have every reason to believe any problem arising from strong winds or heavy rain will be handled efficiently.

Almost a week after a damaging storm, some Auckland residents were still without hot water last night while the last few houses were having their power restored.

A Titirangi resident says a live power line has been left on his driveway since Wednesday's storm, and Vector is responding sluggishly.

A Glen Eden family are fed up at being without power three days after an Auckland storm, despite numerous calls to their power company.

"I'm not responsible for the rain, surely?" An 85-year-old has been hit with a big bill after a fuse blew on the power pole outside his house.

Survey shows young people most mindful with energy use, while Aucklanders least prepared to go without.

Mighty River Power's next chief executive, Fraser Whineray, sees flat demand as being the biggest challenge facing the electricity generator and retailer.

There'll be no hot cup of tea or coffee for several thousand south Aucklanders getting up for work this morning.

There is not a lot to like about residential electricity prices in New Zealand.

Strong demand for shares in Genesis Energy saw the public pool heavily scaled back yesterday, raising the ire of investors who missed out on getting their desired levels of stock but also reflecting the offer's popularity.

Home electricity bills rose by $63 on average in the 12 months to February, with the biggest increases generally occurring in some smaller cities and their large rural hinterlands.

The Treasury would have liked more "Mum and Dad" small investors to have bought shares in electricity generators Mighty River Power and Meridian Energy.

If the price is set too low, money is left on the table and assets can be sold off at a discount, writes Christoph Schumacher and Sasha Molchanov. This is neither desirable nor efficient.

The average power bill for a family of four will rise by 2.4 per cent this year, Energy and Resources Minister Simon Bridges said yesterday.

Over the past couple of weeks, households have been receiving nasty surprises in the mail.

Households will be socked with power bill increases of as much as 24% next month and power firms and network operators are blaming each other over who is responsible.