Electricity Authority consults on definition of "small business" for rebates eligibility

In July 2025 the Electricity Authority Te Mana Hiko (Authority) introduced a requirement that, from 1 April 2026, electricity distribution businesses will need to pay negative charges (rebates) to reward households and small businesses for supplying power to the network when needed at peak times, helping to keep the network resilient and affordable.

Since introducing the requirement, we have found that distributors are facing challenges in applying the definition of “small business consumer” (defined in the Electricity Industry Act 2010 as those using less than 40MWh per year) because they generally work with connection capacity (kVA), not annual consumption.

We have also identified that some large generators could qualify for the rebates, even though the new rules were intended to apply to mass market consumers (households and small businesses) rather than large generators.

We are now consulting on a proposal to remove the reference to “small business consumers”, and instead require that the negative charge is applied to:

• price categories targeting business consumers with a connection capacity of 45kVA or less
• distributed generation systems where the maximum deliverable generation capacity is 45kW or below.

We consider that, together, these changes would make the policy clearer and easier to apply, ensuring that the rebates apply to the mass market consumers we intended to target, while avoiding an unintended extension of the policy to larger-scale generators.

We welcome your feedback before 21 November 2025.

Consultation