Social power f irm has to say haere ra¯ to customers
Ezra Hirawani’s dream of an electricity company that lifts people out of power poverty is facing a crisis.
Hirawani developed Nau Mai Ra¯ as a power company that treats power as a human right that everyone can access no matter their financial situation.
It runs on a technology platform that allows it to operate with low margins and offers a commitment not to turn off anyone’s power as long as they remain in contact.
But now rising wholesale prices are putting pressure on and it has had to drop 500 customers.
‘‘The energy industry has been built on this concept of ‘cash or candles’. We want to offer something different,’’ Hirawani said.
The price of wholesale power, the price at which retailers buy power from generators, has spiked, largely due to low lake levels in hydroelectric dams. It is the highest it has been since 2018.
Cam Burrows, chief executive of the Energy Retailers Association, said the situation was difficult for retailers across the country.
‘‘Because of the high wholesale prices, and flat price points for customers, those cost margins are really being squeezed. It is a particularly challenging environment, especially for those smaller retailers like Nau Mai Ra¯ ,’’ Burrows said.
Nau Mai Ra¯’s small margins meant it had less buffer to absorb the price increase. It had to drop 500 households. In May, the company had 1000.
Hirawani knew that some of his customers would not be able to find another power retailer because of historic bad debt so tried to drop those able to shift elsewhere.
He and the team have spent the past weeks calling customers, asking those in better financial positions to ‘‘free up their seat on the waka’’.
‘‘We could have done the normal business thing and not cared about the people. But we have got stuck into calling every one of our customers. We have cried on the phone with people but at the end of the day they all supported our kaupapa,’’ Hirawani said.
Paul Fuge, manager of Powerswitch, a power comparison site run by Consumer NZ, said Nau Mai Ra¯ deserved to be treated differently by the generators.
‘‘In New Zealand there is no retailer of last resort. There is a hole where people can fall through the gaps. That is a really bad thing when people need access to an essential service like electricity,’’ Fuge said.
Fuge said that because electricity was an essential service, it should not be an option for people not to have it.
‘‘Nau Mai Ra¯ provide power to customers no-one else wants to take on. The difficult thing is they are buying electricity off the same market as everyone else, so it becomes very challenging,’’ Fuge said.
Hirawani said Nau Mai Ra was not looking for a handout.
‘‘The solution is to give retailers like Nau Mai Ra¯ , that represent vulnerable communities, a price point that allows them to be able to support those communities. The price that we need is not a huge, magnificent, massive discount. What we are asking for is a historically average price,’’ Hirawani said.