ICP transfer delays

We regularly publish case studies to educate and guide industry participants on how to comply with the Electricity Industry Participation Code 2010 (Code) .

This case study discusses a situation where the Authority made an error and sets out the steps we’ve taken to prevent a reoccurrence.

Background

The Authority processes around 20 distributor switching requests a year under Schedule 11.2 of the Code.

The electricity registry is part of the Authority’s market operations services contracts. The registry is a national database of every installation connection point (ICP) in New Zealand. It facilitates the exchange of information between industry participants for the reconciliation, invoicing and switching process.

Earlier this year, Vector flagged that five ICP switch requests they’d made in 2023 and 2024 had not been processed. We put several steps in place to prevent this happening again and apologised to Vector for the impact on their customers.

Issue

The Authority receives ICP switch requests by email. We manually check each request before entering it into the registry to show that the ICP has moved to a different distributor.

Our investigation into the unprocessed switches identified gaps in our internal processes. These gaps led to delays in processing network ICP transfer requests in a timely manner. As a result, five switch requests were either missed or not actioned, and those switches were not recorded in the registry. We have since reviewed all switch requests received since 2021 and are confident that all other requests were processed correctly.

Consumer impact

When an ICP switch request is not processed, some consumers can end up temporarily paying more, or less, because of lines charge allocation and unaccounted for electricity. It could also mean customers do not receive advanced notice of outages, which can be important for business planning or when a household includes a medically dependent consumer.

Although some consumers were temporarily affected, there was no long-term financial impact as all charges were corrected through a backdated adjustment process. Fortunately, Vector confirmed that no medically dependent people were affected. However, we are acutely aware of the need to put measures in place to remove this risk from our switching process.

Resulting improvements to the Authority’s ICP switch process 

We have made several important changes internally to support a robust switching process. This includes:

  1. Strengthened the internal management oversight of – and involvement in – the ICP transfer process.
  2. Engaged the Registry Manager to support the day-to-day management of the ICP transfer process.
  3. Improved the tracking of ICP switch requests to more readily identify where there may hold-ups of issues with switch requests.
  4. Highlighted internally the importance of the swift processing of switch requests.

We are proposing to automate ICP transfers as part of a range of proposals outlined in the Evolving multiple trading and switching consultation paper to improve switching for consumer with retailers, distributors and metering providers.

Even if these proposed changes go ahead, the Authority will continue to be responsible for processing ICP switches in the interim.

This case highlights the importance of timely switch processing and robust tracking systems to prevent similar issues in the future.

We would also like to take this opportunity to remind participants that all ICP switch requests should be sent to info@ea.govt.nz. This will help to ensure the swift processing of any requests.