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Grey Power is canvassing for business through its new electricity entity and age is no barrier.
The advocacy organisation is usually promoting the welfare of those in the 50-plus age group but has now set up Grey Power Electricity (GPE) and offering a guaranteed power price for five years.
Grey Power has aligned itself to Pulse Energy to provide the power supply and is already signing up customers.
Graham Adams, president of Grey Power Wanganui, said the customer campaign would also dispel the misconception that age determines membership to the organisation.
"Anyone can sign up to GPE but joining Grey Power is a condition," Mr Adams said.
He said the new arrangement would be welcomed by electricity users sick of being hammered by high prices.
"The guts of this deal is that Pulse will guarantee a tariff to their Grey Power customers for five years, and any reduction in the overall market will be passed on to those who sign up. It's a win-win situation."
Mr Adams said membership in Wanganui stood at about 1300 and many of those people relied solely on electricity.
"The power suppliers have been rorting the domestic market for the last couple of decades and power prices are way too high.
"This partnership will prove to be the catalyst for a long-overdue rejuvenation of Grey Power," he said.
"Actually, there has never been any age qualification for membership and we have not been anywhere good enough at dispelling the notion."
He said switching to GPE was open to everyone, young and old.
"Couples raising children on limited incomes will benefit substantially from the much lower electricity costs from GPE."
Mr Adams said Grey Power had investigated Pulse as a likely partner and was satisfied such an arrangement would work.
Pulse is majority New Zealand-owned, independent electricity retailer, servicing over 43,000 customers. It was listed on the NZ Stock Exchange in November 2007 and in 2012 won the Deloitte "Fast 50" as the fastest growing company.
He said the scheme simply offered a low price up front and was only available to Grey Power members. There would be no mark ups on network charges along with easily understood accounts. Other discounts will be offered for those who get their accounts online or who pay their account by direct debit.
Grey Power would take care of transferring a member's account to Pulse.
He said there was no penalty for anyone wanting to go to another supplier as long as they give GPE 30 days' notice.
The new deal only covers electricity but GPE was looking to gas to its services in future.
"Grey Power customers living in different parts of the country pay different but our initial analysis has shown some of our members would save as much as $300 a year while others will receive less than that," Mr Adams said.
Molly Melhuish, a long-time power advocate, is a member of Grey Power's energy advisory group and she said aligning to Pulse would challenge the "big companies to match prices".
Ms Melhuish said Grey Power had pursued this idea for years but when negotiations with state-owned companies failed the organisation approached independent providers.
"Though privately owned, these independents were set up to offer value for money rather than to capture obscene profits." She described Pulse as a "lean and efficient" retailer offering discounted electricity rather than an entity increasing its asset base.