Requiring distributors to pay a rebate when consumers supply electricity at peak times: definition of a small business

Upcoming Open Closed Decision

View submissions Submissions closed 24 November 2025

Consultation

In July 2025 the Electricity 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 at peak times, helping to keep the network resilient and affordable.

This consultation sought feedback on a proposal to remove the reference to “small business consumers”, and instead require that the rebates are 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.

Consultation paper