Vector electricity customers up 0.8 pct over year

NZPA

Thursday 21st July 2011

Vector, which owns the electricity distribution network in the greater Auckland area, increased customer numbers 0.8 percent from a year earlier to 532,607 at June 30.

The 4362 new electricity customers over the year was 10.1 percent fewer than new customers in the year to June 2010.

A spokeswoman for the energy and fibre optic infrastructure company said the decline in new customers was due to a first half fall in connections to multi-unit dwellings, such as apartments.

That trend had reversed in the second half of the financial year, partly offsetting the decline in the first six months, she said today.

A measure of average outage time during the year rose to 113.8 minutes during normal operations for each customer, from 66.8 minutes the year before. That included 21.1 minutes due to a major storm last September.

During the latest year the weather had been more volatile, compared to the settled patterns of the previous few years, resulting in more outages, the spokeswoman said.

That included outages caused by vegetation hitting power lines during storms.

The amount of electricity distributed by Vector during the year rose 1.8 percent to 8319 gigawatt hours.

The number of smart meters installed around the country rose nearly 115 percent to 245,477.

In 2010 Vector bought Siemens’ 50 percent shareholding in Advanced Metering Services, taking the Vector shareholding to 100 percent.

Vector's shares were down 1c at the start of trading today to $2.38, having been as high as $2.57 on Monday.

On Tuesday, Vector hit out at a draft decision from the Commerce Commission on electricity prices, which would require the company to reduce its net average electricity prices by 9 percent in 2012.

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