The best power plan in NZ for EVs and solar (2026 guide)

There's no single "best" power plan in New Zealand, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What there is is a best plan for your house, and it depends on one thing more than any other: when you use power, not how much.

That's good news if you've got an EV or solar, because you have more control over timing than almost anyone else on the grid.

2026 has been a big year for this. From 1 July 2026, every large retailer (anyone with 5%+ market share, about 83% of Kiwi connections) is required by the Electricity Authority to offer at least one plan with cheaper off-peak rates. From 1 April 2026, lines companies have to pay households a rebate for exporting power at peak. And the default solar export limit doubled from 5kW to 10kW.

Translation: the plans below didn't exist in this form two years ago. It's worth a fresh look.

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First, the "best for you" picker

Find yourself in this table, then read the matching section.

If you have an EV

An EV adds roughly 2,000–3,000 kWh a year to your bill. Because extra usage doesn't add a daily charge, what matters is your variable rate, so realistically that's $550–$1,000 of new electricity a year. About half that if you shift it all into a cheap night window. This is the single biggest lever you have.

The half-price-night plans

Three retailers now do essentially the same thing, and they're the cleanest option for most EV owners:

• Contact Good Charge. 50% off your usage rates, 9pm–7am, every night. No fixed term. Contact also throws in 10% off bp charge public charging, rising to 70% off if you charge between 7–9am or 4–6pm.
• Genesis EVHome. 50% off variable rates 9pm–7am. Same shape.
• Meridian Night Saver. Cheaper rates 9pm–7am, open term, plus a $10/month credit for your first 12 months. (Meridian's old fixed-term EV Plan has been retired; existing customers keep their rates until the term ends.)

A 10-hour window at 7.4kW is about 74kWh of charge, far more than anyone needs in a night. The window length is never the constraint.

Also worth a look: Electric Kiwi's MoveMaster runs night rates at half the peak rate, but from 11pm, not 9pm, which is two hours less useful. Pulse's Power Shift adds half-price all weekend on top of an 11pm–7am night rate. Mercury's EV Fuel Package is the weakest of the majors: only 20% off in the same window, it verifies you actually own an EV, and it locks you in for two years.

The free-hours plans

Uniquely Kiwi, and genuinely good if your charging is modest.

• Contact Good Nights. Free power 9pm–midnight, Monday to Friday. Three hours at 7.4kW is ~22kWh a night, which covers about 130km of driving. Important: not available if you have solar.
• Electric Kiwi Hour of Power. One free hour a day, on any Electric Kiwi plan, which you pick from 9am–5pm or 9pm–7am and can change daily in the app. Worth ~7kWh a day at a fast home charger.

Three things nobody puts in the marketing

1. The daily charge doesn't get discounted. Free hours aren't free. You still pay the fixed daily supply charge right through them.
2. The cheap night is paid for by a dearer day. Toast Electric is one of the few retailers publishing a full rate card, and the shape is instructive: on their Wellington day/night plan the night rate is exactly half the day rate (25.0c day, 12.5c night for a standard user). But that day rate sits about 15% above their flat anytime rate of 21.7c. If your household is daytime-heavy, a night plan can leave you worse off even with cheap charging.
3. Road user charges now cost more than the electricity. Light EVs have paid RUC since April 2024 at $76 per 1,000km, or about 7.6c/km. Charging on a night rate costs roughly 3c/km. Any "EVs cost $2 to fill up" claim you see is quietly ignoring the bigger number.

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If you have solar

Here's the uncomfortable truth first: a unit of solar you use yourself is worth roughly 1.5–3× a unit you export. Self-consumption saves you your variable import rate, typically 22–38c/kWh depending on retailer and network. Export earns you 8–23c. So run the dishwasher at midday, charge the car in the sun on weekends, and treat buy-back as the consolation prize it is.

(You'll see "solar is worth 4× exported" quoted a lot. That compares export against the all-in average price of about 40c/kWh, but that figure includes your daily fixed charge spread across your usage, and generating your own power doesn't get you out of the daily charge. Compare against the variable rate only.)

Buy-back rates as they stand

Watch the GST column, because retailers quote both ways and it's a 15% difference. If you're not GST-registered (most households aren't), an ex-GST rate is what actually lands in your account, so a "12.5c excl" from Genesis and a "12.5c incl" from Toast are not the same deal. Where retailers don't state a basis, we've marked it n/a. Ask them. Rates vary by network and change often, so confirm before switching.

The trap in that table

Every single peak export window is roughly 7–11am and 5–9pm. Solar generates at midday.

Without a battery, you have almost nothing to sell during the hours that pay best. You'll realise the off-peak rate on nearly all your export. Which means a panels-only household on Octopus Peaker, headline rate 23c, actually lands around 10c. Worse than a boring flat 12.5c plan. Most peak windows are weekday-only too, writing off 104 days a year. Meridian's 24c is narrower still: July, August and September only.

Peak rates are battery products. If you don't have storage, sort by the off-peak or flat number and ignore the headline entirely.

If you do have a battery

Now the peak rates mean something, and you can arbitrage: charge overnight cheap, export into the evening peak. Be realistic about the maths, though. If peak export is 23c and your night import is 16c, the gross spread is 7c. But at ~90% round-trip efficiency you need 1.11kWh in for every 1kWh out, so the real spread is closer to 5c/kWh. And peak export windows are weekdays only. A 10kWh battery pushing 5kWh into peak every weekday earns roughly $65–90 a year. That doesn't pay for a battery on its own; resilience and self-consumption still do the heavy lifting.

The exception is Canterbury. Ecotricity and lines company Orion run Resi-Flex, which pays 60c/kWh for peak export (7–11am and 5–10pm weekdays) against a 21c standard rate, guaranteed through 30 September 2026. You need to be on the Orion network with a battery on one of seven approved inverter brands: Huawei, AlphaESS, Redback, SolaX, Sungrow, Solis or SigEnergy. The catch is that it's a trial capped at around 100 households. If you're in Christchurch with a battery, get in quick.

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Actually making the switch

Most NZ retailers price by address, so their plan pages rarely show a usable rate until you plug in your details. Two free comparison tools do that for you:

• Powerswitch. Run by Consumer NZ, covers 97–98% of the market, with average reported savings somewhere between $350 and $450/year depending which page of their site you read. It excludes one-off joining credits from its rankings, and doesn't ingest your half-hourly smart meter data, so it approximates TOU and free-hours plans rather than modelling them exactly.
• Billy. The Electricity Authority's own site, launched March 2026. Publicly owned, takes no commissions, models results against real consumption data from ~27,000 households.

Use both. Have your ICP number (15 digits, on your bill) and at least 12 months of usage handy.

Switching takes 3–4 days and your power never goes off. It's free unless you're breaking a fixed term, so check for exit fees, and check whether a joining credit covers them. Once you've left, your old retailer is barred under the industry code from targeted win-back marketing for 180 days, so you won't get a "come back" call the week after.

One more thing worth knowing: from 30 October 2026, retailers must check every residential customer against their own best available plan once a year and help you switch to it for free. It's a good rule. It's also no substitute for looking yourself, because it only compares you against that retailer's plans.

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Rates and plan terms change constantly and vary by network area. Everything here was accurate as at August 2026. Always confirm with the retailer before you sign up.