Worthy groups gain from power company fines

By CHRIS DANIELS

Health researchers and the Citizens Advice Bureau have benefited from the penalties imposed on rule-breaking power companies by their "Maria".

The electricity industry set up Maria (the Metering and Reconciliation Information Agreement) to streamline the way power companies compete for retail customers.

When competition began, thousands of consumers had difficulty switching to new suppliers, or experienced delays of months in receiving bills.

The Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences is getting $100,000 from the fines fund to help pay for a project looking into the health benefits of home insulation.

The Citizens Advice Bureau gets $30,000 to help in its goal of "informing and educating electricity customers around the country".

It will use the money to produce brochures on how to cope with problems involving power companies.

The penalties include:

* $6000 from Mighty River Power when it failed to respond to switch requests within two working days.

* A further $20,000 from Mighty River when it delayed switching around 550 domestic customers.

Most of these delays in acknowledging requests were for between six and 12 weeks.

* $27,000 from TrustPower when it failed to send files to the National Reconciliation Manager, who is responsible for the monthly reconciliation of electricity that retailers and generators buy and sell. For this misdeed, which remained undiscovered for 18 months, TrustPower also had to pay more than $34,000 in costs.

* Meridian escaped a fine when it switched a customer to fellow state-owned power company Genesis, then provided an inaccurate final meter reading. "The resulting reconciliation error adversely impacted upon Genesis."

Though it was not fined for this breach, Meridian had to pay $1750 in costs.