We’re proud to now be able to offer our great value electricity in the place where it all began – Whakatane.
This is something of a homecoming as the three founding partners in Electric Kiwi – Julian, Huia and Phill – all grew up together in this great little town.
What’s more, Powerswitch has ranked Electric Kiwi as the cheapest of all power companies in the area – an extra reason for us to cheer.
Our managing director Julian Kardos spoke to the Whakatane Beacon about bringing cheaper power to locals and why it’s good news for the area – whether you plan to be a customer of ours or not!
Check out the article below:
Electric Kiwi brings low cost power
An electricity company that features strongly as a low-cost supplier in the residential consumer market is now supplying power in Whakatane.
Electric Kiwi, founded by three former Whakatane school mates, Julian Kardos, Phillip Anderson, and Huia Burt, was launched during the winter and now has 600 custom-ers nationwide.
"Powerswitch shows we are pretty much the cheapest across the country," Kardos said.
The BEACON was able to verify his statement by comparing live power bills with customer plans offered by other suppliers. Powerswitch showed that Electric Kiwi would have been able to supply the cheapest power in three of the five cases, particularly at the medie um- to low-use end of the market.
Among the five, Trustpower, Tiny Mighty Power and the pre-pay sup-plier also featured competitively.
Electric Kiwi has some stand-out differences to other electricity sup-pliers in that it offers customers one free hour of clectricity a day during off-peak periods, and it does not require customer contracts.
The free hour of power is either between 10am and 11am or between 2pm and 3pm, when customers can choose to use appliances that would be costly to run outside the free hour.
Mr. Kardos said the free hour of power was a simple way for custom. ers to reduce their power bills, pro-vided they were prepared to change the time when they ran their appli. ances, such as clothes dryers and washing machines.
He said Electric Kiwi had consum-ers saving up to 20 percent on their power bills, thanks to the free hour of power, but the average saving was about & percent.
Even those customers who did not make use of the free hour would still save 4 percent on their power bills, Mr Kardos said.
To join Electric Kiwi a customer's home must have a smart meter, which digitally records a household's power use every half hour.
Mr. Kardos said the smart meter meant Electric Kiwi could separate out how much power a customer used during their free hour and,
"charge zero for it, and provide cheaper electricity overalle.
According to its website, Electric Kiwi is an independent supplier, majority-owned by its management team, and it wants to give "the status quo a shake.
"When starting out, we saw that electricity options were, in many cases, unnecessarily complex. Multiple discounts, joining specials and one-off deals clouded the real price."
The website says although smart meters are being rolled out across the country, "few providers had taken up the challenge to do anything smart with them".
"We saw a gap for a company that could maximise online and smart. meter technology that was cheaper, smarter and, importantly, simple to use."
Electric Kiwi says it offers the same low power price to everyone.
