Electricity meter types in New Zealand, explained

When you sign up to a power plan in New Zealand, the retailer needs to know your meter configuration, because it decides which rates can appear on your bill. It is not a preference. It is determined by how the property is wired and what equipment is installed, and it usually predates you.

Here is what each configuration means.

Uncontrolled (anytime)

Everything in the house on one register, always available, one rate. The simplest arrangement, and the most common in apartments and newer homes with no separate hot water circuit.

Controlled

A second register on a circuit the lines company can interrupt — briefly switch off — at times of peak demand on the network. In New Zealand this is almost always the hot water cylinder.

You get a lower rate on that circuit because the network gets the right to shed that load when it needs to. In practice the interruptions are short and a well-insulated cylinder rides through them, which is why most people with a controlled circuit have never noticed one.

If your bill shows two usage lines with different rates, this is usually why.

Inclusive (composite)

Controllable load and ordinary load metered together on a single register, billed at one blended rate. It is the tidiest bill and the least flexible arrangement. There is no cheap register to move usage into, and some plans are simply not available on it.

Night rate and day/night

Two registers split by clock time rather than by circuit: one rate during the day, a cheaper one overnight. Less common than controlled hot water, and it needs a meter that can distinguish the two periods.

Night-rate configurations are the older cousin of modern time-of-use pricing, which does the same thing with finer resolution on a smart meter.

Why it matters when you compare plans

Two reasons, and both are practical.

It limits what you can be offered. A plan built around a cheap controlled rate is not available to a property with no controlled register. A time-of-use plan needs interval metering. When a retailer's advertised rate looks unusually good, it is worth checking which configuration it assumes.

It changes which rate matters. A household with hot water on controlled has a meaningful share of its usage on the cheaper register, so the headline anytime rate describes less of the bill than it appears to. Comparing two plans on the anytime rate alone can point the wrong way.

What we do with this

Meter configuration is one of the questions our comparison asks, and it is deliberately a question rather than something we look up. Retailers' rate files say which configurations are priced, not what is installed at your address. Only the industry ICP registry knows that, and reaching it is a different piece of work. So we ask, we offer a "not sure" option, and we do not guess.

If you do not know, the answer is on your bill: count the usage lines. One line, one register. Two lines, two registers, and the labels tell you which kind.

We compare 8 power companies, and which of them can serve your configuration is part of what the results show.