Prices & Bills
Energy prices and bills
How have energy prices changed over time? How do they vary across towns, regions and sectors? What role do fuel costs, networks and retail competition play?
This page explores those questions with New Zealand data on electricity, natural gas and liquid fuels. The layout follows the US Energy Data prices page so differences in the two systems are easier to see.
Same sections, same order as US Energy Data: Prices & Bills ↗, so the two can be read side by side. Where New Zealand data cannot support a chart, the slot stays and says why.
Explore electricity prices & bills
The US page opens with a combined explorer: retail price or monthly bill, customer sector, and level versus annual change versus within-year volatility.
Chart not available for New Zealand
We have not built that combined explorer yet. The charts below cover price, bills and annual change as separate views. Volatility and a price/bill toggle need more retail monthly history than this snapshot currently carries.
Electricity prices
One basic affordability measure is the retail price of electricity. The chart uses MBIE's Quarterly Survey of Domestic Electricity Prices (QSDEP): representative town averages in c/kWh including GST. Switch towns in the dropdown. The national series is population-weighted.
Compared with the US: QSDEP is a town survey, not a full regional map. The US page maps every state; here the closest published geography is survey towns.
Domestic retail electricity prices
Representative town averages from MBIE's quarterly survey, c/kWh incl. GST.
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Real vs nominal electricity prices
Prices elsewhere on this page are adjusted for inflation where MBIE publishes a real series. The chart below compares real and nominal residential electricity for New Zealand as a whole. The gap between the lines is inflation.
Compared with the US: MBIE real series use the Stats NZ CPI (all groups) and are expressed in 2025 dollars.
Real vs nominal electricity prices
Residential March-year averages, c/kWh. The gap is inflation.
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Electricity prices by sector
Retail, commercial and industrial customers often pay very different rates. Consumption patterns, network charges and negotiated contracts all matter. Compare sectors for New Zealand as a whole.
Electricity prices by sector
Real average prices, March years, c/kWh in 2025 dollars.
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Annual change in electricity prices
Levels show the long trend; year-on-year change highlights sharp rises and falls. This chart is the percentage change in real residential prices from one March year to the next.
Compared with the US: National series only. The US page maps the same idea across states with a year scrubber.
Annual change in residential electricity prices
Year-on-year percentage change in real residential prices.
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Electricity price volatility
Annual averages can hide large month-to-month swings that hit household budgets in particular seasons.
Chart not available for New Zealand
The US chart uses the standard deviation of monthly retail prices within each year. New Zealand retail electricity in this snapshot is quarterly (QSDEP) or March-year (MBIE), not a long monthly retail panel. Wholesale monthly spot prices exist, but they are not the retail volatility the US page shows.
Monthly electricity prices
Monthly retail prices make seasonal peaks visible (summer cooling or winter heating).
Chart not available for New Zealand
MBIE does not publish a long national monthly retail electricity price series in the files we use. Closest substitutes in this project: QSDEP (quarterly by town) and EMI wholesale spot prices (monthly by island). Neither matches the US monthly retail state chart.
Electricity bills
What households pay depends on both price and how much they use. EMI publishes modelled residential bills by network reporting region for a standard-use customer.
Compared with the US: Modelled bills include GST. Coverage in this snapshot is recent months only, not a multi-decade state panel like the US page.
Modelled residential electricity bills
Monthly total bill for a standard-use customer, $/month.
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Electricity price vs electricity sources
A common question is how the generation mix relates to prices: more hydro or wind, higher or lower bills?
Chart not available for New Zealand
The US chart scatters states: generation share of a fuel on one axis, average price on the other. Here generation is by Electricity Authority network region and retail prices are by QSDEP town or national MBIE series. Those geographies do not line up cleanly enough for a fair region scatter in this snapshot.
Change in electricity price vs change in source share
Looking at changes rather than levels asks whether places that shifted their mix fastest also saw different price paths.
Chart not available for New Zealand
Same geography mismatch as the levels scatter: we would need a consistent place unit for both price and generation share over a shared period.
Electricity price vs carbon intensity
Do cleaner grids tend to have higher or lower prices?
Chart not available for New Zealand
Electricity emissions and intensity in this snapshot are national (MBIE), not by region. Without place-level carbon intensity we cannot draw the US-style cross-section.
Change in electricity price vs electricity load growth
Faster demand growth (load growth) can push prices up if supply is tight.
Chart not available for New Zealand
Demand is available by network region, but matching retail price changes to those same regions over a long window is not supported by the tidy tables we have yet.
Natural gas prices
How have residential natural gas prices moved over time? MBIE publishes national real prices in dollars per gigajoule.
Compared with the US: National only. New Zealand has no published equivalent of the US state gas-price map in this snapshot.
Natural gas prices
Real residential natural gas price, $/GJ in 2025 dollars.
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Natural gas prices by sector
As with electricity, gas prices differ across residential, commercial, industrial and wholesale customers.
Natural gas prices by sector
Real average prices by customer type, $/GJ in 2025 dollars.
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Petrol and diesel prices
How much do drivers pay at the pump? Weekly national retail prices for regular petrol and diesel, including GST.
Compared with the US: National pump prices from MBIE weekly fuel monitoring. The US page uses state and regional gasoline; New Zealand's published weekly series is national.
Petrol and diesel retail prices
Weekly national pump prices, c/L incl. GST.
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Also useful in New Zealand
These series do not have a direct slot on the US prices page, but they matter for the New Zealand story: wholesale spot prices, petrol price composition (import cost, tax, margin) and retail market concentration.
Wholesale spot prices
Simple average monthly spot price, $/MWh.
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Regular petrol price composition
Quarterly breakdown of the regular petrol pump price, c/L.
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Retail market concentration (HHI)
Herfindahl–Hirschman index of retailer ICP share by network region.
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