The series of initiatives involve paying Tauranga-headquartered TrustPower $NZ7.2 million for over 6700 power meters in Christchurch and Wellington; paying $NZ7.6 million for a 25% stake in Wellington IT company Energy Intellect Ltd (EIL) and its Australian data management business Elect Data Services; and signing a five-year service agreement with Australian Gas Light subsidiary Agility Management, whereby Agility will transfer time-of-use metering data services it now gets from EIL and others to NGC. AGL owns 66% of NGC Holdings.
NGC chief executive Phil James said that together these agreements represented "a significant milestone" in NGC's strategy to provide an integrated meter asset and information service to energy retailers and large end-use customers in New Zealand and Australia.
James said the overall purchases, while small in the context of NGC's total metering business of 800,000 residential and commercial sites, further diversified the company's metering customer base, and achieved improved economies of scale. The agreements with EIL and Agility are expected to be completed by the end of August.
Meanwhile, ratings agency Standard and Poors has removed its "credit-watch with negative implications" tag from both AGL and NGC, and re-affirmed both companies' credit ratings, saying that uncertainty surrounding AGL's proposed purchase of Victoria's Loy Yang A power station had been resolved.
