Company Information

The Electricity Invercargill electricity network has provided power to Invercargill since 1905 having operated under a variety of different names over the years, most notably the Invercargill Municipal Electricity Department.

Electricity Invercargill Limited is owned by the Invercargill City Council, through its subsidiary Invercargill City Holdings Limited. Invercargill City Holdings retains 100% ownership of the Company and receives an annual dividend approaching $4 million.

The Optimised Deprival Valuation of the Electricity Invercargill network assets is almost $46 million. These assets consist of over 680 km of lines and cables and over 430 distribution transformers, with a capacity of over 140 MVA.

Electricity Invercargill contracts PowerNet Limited to manage its network assets and charges PowerNet a fee for the use of the network. PowerNet adds maintenance costs and overheads to this and the total costs are on-charged to Electricity Retailers through what is known in the industry as wheeling fees or line charges.

Electricity Invercargill has completed one of the most significant undergrounding initiatives of all network companies in New Zealand. The Company's determination to increase public safety and enhance the visual environment through its undergrounding policy is likely to result in all undergrounding being completed in Invercargill city by 2011.

As a result the Electricity Invercargill network is consistently the most reliably performing electricity network in New Zealand. It is amongst the lowest priced networks yet provides a reasonable level of return to its shareholder and Electricity network companies are measured by their financial and network performance and Electricity Invercargill continues to be ranked by the Commerce Commission as one of the most efficiently operated networks in New Zealand.