Every line on your bill, and where the number comes from

A PowerHub invoice has more lines than most power bills, because we show you the things other retailers roll into a single rate. The sample bill above is a worked example - here is every line explained, and where each number comes from. The line numbers below match the numbered markers on the sample bill.

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A PowerHub bill is the wholesale market price of the electricity you used, plus 2.3 cents per kWh as our service fee, plus your network, metering and levy charges passed through at cost. Nothing is marked up and nothing is bundled. On your first invoice you will also see three one-off joining costs and a refundable prudential security, which sits outside the GST subtotal because it is a bond rather than a charge.

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The electricity itself

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Line 5 - Wholesale Electricity Export (usage). Every half hour, the wholesale market sets a price for electricity at your grid exit point. We multiply your metered consumption in that half hour by that half hour's price. No averaging, no smoothing, no seasonal blend - 1,488 separate calculations in a 31-day month. This line is what we paid for your power, passed through to you at cost. It is also why your bill moves: a mild October and a cold July can differ by more than half.

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Line 6 - Solar Injection (into grid) credit. If you have solar, everything you push back into the grid is credited at the same half-hourly market price we buy at - not at a retail buy-back rate we chose. That means exporting at 6pm on a winter evening is worth many times more than exporting at midday in December, which is the entire economic case for pairing solar with a battery.

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PowerHub's fee - the only part that is ours

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Line 7 - PowerHub Service Fee (Usage). Two cents per kilowatt-hour consumed. It does not rise when wholesale prices rise, which means we make exactly the same amount in a price spike as we do on a mild Tuesday. We have no incentive for prices to be high. It appears as its own line because a margin you cannot see is a margin you cannot check.

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Line 7 - PowerHub Service Fee (Feed-in). Ten percent of the value of what you export, shown as a separate charge against the export credit rather than netted into it, so you can see the gross credit and the fee independently. Because it is a percentage of a value rather than a rate per kWh, there is no quantity beside it - the quantity column is deliberately blank.

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Getting the power to you

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Lines 8–9 - Distribution Network Charges. Your local lines company's charge for delivering the power, split across daily, peak, shoulder, off-peak and controlled rates depending on your distributor's price schedule and your price category. We pass these through at the published rate - we do not mark them up and we do not average them. Peak windows are not standardised nationally: Wellington Electricity's peak runs April to September only, Vector's runs 7–11am June to August and 5–10pm May to September including weekends, and Orion runs five bands with a super-off-peak between 3am and 5am. Your network's own definition is the one we bill against.

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Line 10 - Distribution Network Injection Credit. From 1 April 2026 distributors must pay rebates to households and small businesses exporting at peak. Where your distributor pays one, it appears here as a credit. This is separate from, and additional to, the wholesale value of your export.

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Transmission (Transpower) - usually inside lines 8–9. Twenty-eight of New Zealand's twenty-nine distributors bundle transmission into their delivery prices. Vector is the exception and raises it as a distinct charge, so it appears as its own line for Vector-network connections and nowhere else. If you are not on Vector and you see this line, tell us - it is a mistake.

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Line 11 - Metering Charges. Your meter's daily operating and reading charge, set by your metering equipment provider and passed through at cost. If your property has an older meter that cannot record half-hourly data, an upgrade is needed before you can be billed at wholesale - we will tell you at application, not afterwards.

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Line 12 - Electricity Authority Levy. Set by the Electricity Authority and applied per kilowatt-hour to every electricity account in New Zealand. Every retailer pays it and every retailer passes it on; most bundle it invisibly into a rate.

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One-off costs on your first bill

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Line 14 - Switching-in - $5.75, first bill only. The cost of lodging your switch request with the Electricity Registry.

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Line 14 - Credit Check - $6.90 for a household, $35.08 for a business, first bill only. Recovered at cost from the credit bureau. Because we buy on the wholesale market on your behalf, we carry your exposure between the time you use power and the time you pay for it - which is why the check happens at all.

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Line 13 - Billing - $5.75, every month. It covers running your billing cycle - collecting your half-hourly meter data, pricing every half hour against the market, reconciling it and issuing this invoice. It is not a joining cost, and it appears on every bill.

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Not on this bill - the cost of paying it. Your payment provider charges a small fee at the moment the payment goes through: $0.90 for a direct debit from a bank account, or 1.95% (minimum $0.90) on Visa or Mastercard. A failed payment costs $9.90. These are not PowerHub charges and we add nothing to them - they show on your bank or card statement beside the payment, not as a line on this invoice.

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Line 17 - Refundable Prudential - first appears on your first bill, no GST. To buy on the wholesale market on your behalf, PowerHub must post security to NZX Clearing. That security is passed back-to-back: NZX Clearing holds it against PowerHub, and PowerHub holds this amount against your account. It is sized from your expected annual consumption, valued at a base wholesale rate of $0.20 per kWh, stressed by 50% for an adverse market, covering two months - about $0.05 per kWh of your expected annual use. It sits outside the GST subtotal because it is a bond, not a charge. It is not a one-off charge: NZX Clearing revises what PowerHub must post as market prices and volumes move, and PowerHub may pass the relevant adjustment on to you. It is returned to you within 30 days of leaving, provided there is no outstanding balance. Every retailer posts one of these. Most bury the cost of it inside your rate.

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Your next bill will look much lighter

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Two of the lines above appear once and never again: switching-in and the credit check. The $5 billing charge is not one of them - it is charged every month. The refundable prudential is different - it is collected on your first bill and then held against your account, and it is adjusted from time to time as NZX Clearing revises what PowerHub must post.

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Three things that surprise people

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Why is there a loss factor on the energy line? Because electricity is metered at your property but purchased at the grid exit point, and some is lost as heat in between. Retailers buy slightly more than you use, and that difference is real money. Every ICP carries a loss category code in the registry. We apply the factor to the wholesale purchase only - network charges and the Electricity Authority levy follow your metered kWh, because that is how they are invoiced to us.

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Why does the feed-in service fee have no quantity beside it? Because it is a percentage of a value, not a rate per kWh. Printing a kWh quantity next to a percentage produces a row where quantity times rate does not equal the amount - which is exactly the sort of thing that should stop an auditor, and would.

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Why is the prudential outside the GST subtotal? Because it is not a charge. It is a refundable security deposit held on your account, and GST does not apply to it. It appears under a separate "On-account items" heading so it can never be confused with money you have spent.

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Where every dollar goes

Of every $1 of ongoing charges across all PowerHub members in July 2026:

Network delivery - 54c. Poles, wires and transmission, paid to your lines company at cost.

Wholesale energy - 34c. The actual market price of your power, half hour by half hour.

Metering and levy - 5c. Your smart meter, plus the government electricity levy.

PowerHub fee and billing - 7c. Our margin plus the $5.75 monthly billing charge - the only part we keep.

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Based on all member bills for July 2026, excluding the one-off joining costs (switching-in and credit check), referral credits and the refundable prudential. The $5 monthly billing charge is included, because it is charged every month. July was a part-month for most members, so fixed charges carry more weight here than they will over a full month. Figures include GST and are rounded to the nearest cent in the dollar. Figures as at July 2026.

Four numbers from the same month: 46,478 kWh billed to members; 8.68c average wholesale energy cost per kWh including GST; 0.88c PowerHub’s variable fee per kWh including GST, plus $5.75 a month billing; and 812 kWh of member solar credited back.

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The one habit that moves the needle: shift off peak

Both halves of your bill - wholesale energy and network delivery - are priced by when you use power, not just how much. A typical weekday looks like this, subject to your network’s tariffs: off-peak overnight until 7am, peak morning 7am to 11am, shoulder through the day 11am to 5pm, peak evening 5pm to 9pm, then off-peak again from 9pm.

Run the big appliances outside the peaks. Dishwasher, washing machine and dryer after 9pm or before 7am.

Charge the EV overnight. Off-peak network rates can be 20 to 30 times cheaper than peak.

Heat the house before the 5pm peak, then let the thermal mass carry you through it.

Step 2 is the battery. Charge it when power is cheapest, run on it through the peak, and keep the lights on when the network cannot - real resilience where you live or work.

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Three principles

No fixed markup. You pay the market price, not a rate we invented.

One margin, one line. Our fee is printed on every bill - you can check it yourself.

Costs at cost. Lines, metering and the levy are passed through exactly as invoiced to us.