Graeme Weston

Recent articles by Ajay Anand, chief executive of Horizon Networks, outline plans to spend millions upgrading the electricity network in Ōpōtiki.

That cost will be added to all Eastern Bay power bills – around $4 a month, for decades, in addition to the daily fixed charge increases.

In a joint letter the Electricity Authority, Commerce Commission, and Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority have already directed electricity networks to consider modern alternatives before building more infrastructure.

The issue is not total electricity use. It is short bursts of high demand in the morning and evening.

Traditionally, networks respond by building bigger lines and sub-stations to handle these peaks, even though those assets sit underused most of the day. There is another option that is not being discussed.

Instead of spending millions on poles and wires, those millions could fund solar panels and batteries on local homes, including rentals.

During the day, solar generates electricity and charges a battery. In the evening, when demand and prices are highest, the battery supplies the home.

This directly reduces peak demand at its source. If enough homes participate, the peak shrinks – or disappears – and the need for expensive network upgrades reduces.

A network upgrade locks in costs on every power bill for decades. Solar and batteries reduce demand permanently and lower bills year after year.

This matters most for low-income households. Higher power bills increase hardship disproportionately.

Lowering bills across all homes delivers a lasting benefit to the whole community.

For renters, the impact is immediate – access to very low, even near-zero, electricity costs.

We can pay for a bigger network or invest in homes that remove the need for it.

That choice sits with Trust Horizon, Horizon Networks, and our MP – invite them to understand our regulators’ thinking on smart technology.

■ Ajay Anand, chief executive Horizon Networks, responds:

Thank you for taking an interest in our 10-year plan to power the Eastern Bay for decades to come. We welcome the engagement on this topic and encourage discussions about how we can best meet the Eastern Bay’s future electricity needs.

You are right that our role is to “keep the lights on” for homes and businesses across the district as electricity demand grows.

We do this by balancing investment in a safe, reliable, and sustainable electricity network with the need to keep long-term energy costs affordable for the communities we serve.

We have been actively working on the issues driving the Ōpōtiki upgrade since 2016.

Over the past 10 years we have investigated a range of options and worked through what we need to do, and when, in order to “keep the lights on”.

Our current forecasts show that without action, customers will experience more frequent voltage issues from around 2027 due to the limitations of the existing network.

The Ōpōtiki upgrade is not about the region running out of electricity, but about maintaining voltage at a safe and usable levels for homes and businesses.

This type of issue can affect customers regardless of where the electricity is coming from, including from local, small-scale solar or batteries.

Before committing to construction, Horizon Networks carefully considered non-network alternatives, including grid-scale batteries as well as generation and batteries available in the region.

These technologies have an important role to play in the future electricity system.

However, at the time the decision needed to be made, these options were not sufficiently certain, at the scale and in the location required, to address the identified network issues and reduce overall costs for consumers.

That said, we envisage a future where these technologies play an important role in deferring future network upgrades.

Horizon Networks is partnering with other electricity networks and OurEnergy to trial a local flexibility market platform.

This will allow consumers or aggregators with flexible load or generation to manage their demand and injection and be rewarded for alleviating areas of constraints on parts of the network during peak times.

An Innovation and Non-Traditional Solutions Allowance (INTSA) application was submitted to Commerce Commission for this initiative and is currently being assessed.

Our April 1, 2026 pricing updates support more solar and batteries in homes.

Households exporting electricity during peak times will receive an additional payment, and all households have been moved to time-of-use pricing, making off-peak electricity cheaper. This reflects what we charge your retailer for line services.

Consumers should speak with their retailer about what plan best suits their situation.

These initiatives are designed to ensure that those who invest in flexibility, or solar and batteries, can be rewarded where they help defer network costs, while keeping the supply of electricity reliable and affordable for ever in the Eastern Bay.