Power pricing & plans

Your price with Flick is made up of a number of components, including generation, transmission and distribution, your Flick Fee, and things like the Electricity Authority (EA) levy.

On our Flat plan you'll pay a flat kWh rate and a fixed daily charge. With our Off Peak plan you'll pay two separate kWh rates, one for off-peak times and one for peak times + a fixed daily charge.

If you're on our Wholesale plan, the cost of generation is set by the wholesale market (spot) price of power. The wholesale electricity market is used by generators to sell power to retailers (like us), who then sell the power onto customers (like you). The New Zealand Electricity Market (NZEM) is regulated by the EA. If you’d like to dig deeper, read more about generation here.

Your transmission/distribution costs depend on your meter set-up and where you live.

A low-power user, or Low User, is a household that uses less electricity than a Standard User: specifically, less than 8000 kWh a year. If you’re living in a household with one or two people and the house is well insulated, energy efficient and/or has gas heating or hot water you're most likely a Low User.

The Standard User plan:

Has a higher daily charge, but a lower charge per kWh used, so if you’re using lots of electricity, the lower unit charge balances things out. If you’re living North of Christchurch and using more than 8,000 units a year you’re generally better off on a Standard User plan. Further south, the threshold is 9,000 units a year. The sorts of situations we’d expect of Standard Users include households of more than two people who are home a lot and use a lot of electricity for heating and hot water, or large flats. Heating methods more than anything will contribute to higher usage. Heaters used constantly, like panel or oil heaters, underfloor heating, uninsulated hot water cylinders, and heated swimming/spa pools all contribute to higher usage.

The Low User plan:

A Low User plan is generally suited to people using less electricity than average. It has a lower daily charge but a higher kWh rate, which means that if you don’t use much electricity you’ll pay less than you would on a Standard User plan. If you’re living North of Christchurch and are using 8,000 units or less a year you’re classed as a low user. Once again, further south and the threshold increases to 9,000 units per year. Low Users tend to be households of one or two people living in well-insulated, energy-efficient houses and/or homes with gas heating or hot water.

Secondary meters:

You're only eligible to be on a Low User plan for your primary residence. That means holiday homes, secondary properties or second meters (for a shed, gate or pool pump, for example) are always classified as standard user ICPs, even if they only use a small amount of electricity. This is enforced at the network company level and is the same for all power companies.

Not sure which User plan you should be on? No worries. If we reckon it's wrong, we’ll change it for you.

After six months of being with Flick, we’ll have enough usage data to update your Load Group User Type automatically. We’ll let you know at the time via an email (and you can easily opt-out of this service too). So don’t worry if you’re not sure right now, we got you! 

Find it confusing? Read more about Standard vs Low user power plans here.

Off-peak power is electricity generated and used during times of low demand (as opposed to peak times which are periods of high demand). Typically, that's during the day when most people are at work, throughout the night when lots of us are asleep and across the weekend. Because there’s less pressure on the national grid during off-peak times, our cheaper, renewable generation can usually meet demand, so electricity is cheaper. Flick offers an Off Peak power plan to encourage our customers to use electricity when it's better for the environment and better for your wallet!

On our Off Peak plan, off-peak hours cover 76% of the week with cheaper rates: 

• 11am until 5pm

• 9pm until 7am 

• All weekend from 12am Saturday until 6.59am Monday

For Weekly billing we’ll send your bill each Tuesday and take your payment on Thursday via Direct Debit from your bank account or Credit Card.

For Fortnightly billing we’ll send your bill every other Tuesday and take your payment on Thursday that week via Direct Debit from your bank account or Credit Card.

For Monthly billing your bill will be available on the second Monday of each month, and we'll take payment ten days later on the Thursday via Direct Debit from your bank account or Credit Card.

You can choose to pay your exact bill amount, or use our Bill Smoother tool (aka Volt), to round your payments up to an amount of your choice.

By paying a little more than your normal bill amount, you'll build up a wee stash of cash that you can then use to automatically knock the top off a higher than normal bill.

To calculate a bill comparison we do the following:

• We take the number days your bill was for and multiply the fixed daily rate to work out the fixed cost

• We take the usage consumption for your bill period and the kWh variable rate(s) to work out the total variable costs

• We then factor in any competitor and regular discounts that are applied on your bill

• Lastly, we compare this with our equivalent and current rate(s) to work out the difference in price from your bill, compared to what you would get at Flick.

NB: For the Off Peak and Wholesale plans, we factor in average usage splits between off-peak and peak periods (based on Flick's customer base).