Commission chair Paula Rebstock said from Wellington today that the commission had completed its initial review of the performance of this country’s 28 electricity distribution businesses and found six had breached the Commerce Act thresholds, six had complied, and the remaining 16 needed to supply further information.

The six in breach of the thresholds were Electricity Invercargill (which breached the price path and reliability component of the quality threshold); Aurora Energy, Mainpower New Zealand, Top Energy, and Waikato’s WEL Networks (which only breached the price path threshold); and Scanpower (which breached only the quality threshold).

Rebstock said price path breaches were attributable to differences between budgeted and actual transmission costs, and were not symptomatic of pricing behaviour detrimental to consumers. Quality breaches were found to be caused by extreme events that resulted in uncharacteristic drops in reliability, such as severe storms.

“Consequently, although we will be closely monitoring the prices and reliability of the six businesses that breached the thresholds going forward, the commission does not consider it would be in the long term interests of consumers to take further action at this stage,” Rebstock added.

To comply with the price path threshold at the second assessment date (last March), each distribution business must not have increased its average prices, net of certain costs, since the date at which it was first assessed (September 2003).