Connecting to our network
If you are an electricity consumer, this section of our site tells you how to get power connected to your property – whether it be to a new house, development, or a new dairy shed.
Moving to an Existing Property
If you’re moving to an existing property, contact an Electricity Retailer. You can stay with the current provider or choose a new one. Consumer NZ offers an online service to help you find the best power company and pricing plan. Visit the Consumer Powerswitch website for more details.
Make Changes to an Existing Connection
If you plan to make changes to an existing supply, you will need to engage an Electrical Contractor. Your Contractor will need to submit a Customer Initiated Works Request.
Types of Alterations:
- Upgrading from single-phase to three-phase
- Reconfiguration from two-phase to single-phase
- Converting from overhead to underground
- Any increase or decrease in load
Adequate notice of any significant load increase shall be given to Westpower so an assessment can be made before connection of supply to prevent problems of future capacity constraints on Westpower’s network.
This will help Westpower in the Distribution Network planning process and ensure that the existing network has enough capacity to supply the new load and that adequate voltage levels are maintained for all consumers.
If you increase your total load installed at your premises and this exceeds your approved load entitlement (service line fuse size), then a Customer Initiated Work Request application needs to be submitted with a request to increase supply.
Westpower will fuse the service cable up to its rated capacity but not beyond. This is a statutory requirement.
It is important therefore for any load increase, to make sure your service cable is rated appropriately for any new load that is to be applied.
Downgrading an existing installation follows the same process as above and will also require a Customer Initiated Work Request application.
Please see How to Get Connected for more information.