By Live 24/7 Wellington Electricity fault line
Power out in the Wellington Electricity network area?
Call Wellington Electricity on 0800 248 148, 24 hours a day. Your retailer cannot dispatch a crew. For a fallen line, sparks or any fire risk, dial 111 first, stay at least 8 metres clear, then ring Wellington Electricity.
The live network status is at www.welectricity.co.nz. Check it first, the cut may already be logged.
Wellington Electricity at a glance
The numbers behind your network bill
Connection points (ICPs)
~169,000
Wellington, Hutt, Porirua
Network conductor
~5,500 km
Heavily underground in CBD
24/7 fault line
0800 248 148
Free-call, NZ-wide
ComCom regulatory path
DPP4 2025-30
Default Price-Quality Path
Where Wellington Electricity owns the wires
Coverage: the Wellington basin, Hutt Valley and Porirua corridor
Wellington Electricity covers from the southern Plimmerton boundary down through the entire Wellington urban area: city, Eastern Bays, Hutt Valley and Porirua. South of Wellington City limits is sea, north of Plimmerton transitions to Electra.
| Area | Density profile | Network type |
|---|---|---|
| Wellington CBD + Thorndon | High density, commercial | Predominantly underground |
| Eastern Bays + Miramar peninsula | Suburban, hill-suburb exposure | Mixed, wind-prone |
| Karori, Khandallah, Johnsonville | Suburban hill | Mixed overhead/underground |
| Lower Hutt + Petone | Suburban + light industrial | Mixed, liquefaction risk |
| Upper Hutt + Stokes Valley | Suburban, growth | Mostly overhead |
| Porirua + Whitby + Pukerua Bay | Suburban | Mixed |
Source: Wellington Electricity Asset Management Plan and Commerce Commission Information Disclosure. North of Plimmerton the network transitions to Electra.
The role, decoded
What Wellington Electricity actually does (and does not do)
Wellington Electricity is a regulated electricity distributor: poles, wires, transformers, substations and the crews that maintain them. It is not a generator and not a retailer.
What Wellington Electricity owns and operates
- · Sub-transmission lines from Transpower grid exit points (GXPs).
- · 11kV and 22kV distribution feeders across the service area.
- · Distribution transformers and pillar boxes on your street.
- · Low-voltage service mains to your meter.
- · The 24/7 control room, fault crews and SCADA operations.
- · Network connection approvals (new builds, solar export, large EV chargers).
What Wellington Electricity does not do
- · Generate the electricity (gentailers and independents do).
- · Set the c/kWh rate on your bill (your retailer does).
- · Send you a monthly bill or take direct debits.
- · Own your smart meter: most are run by independent metering equipment providers (Intellihub, SmartCo, Metrix).
- · Manage retail plans, fixed terms or loyalty credits.
The hidden 30 to 45 per cent
How the Wellington Electricity lines charge shows up on your bill
Roughly 30 to 45 per cent of your retail bill is the Wellington Electricity lines pass-through, collected by your retailer and paid through. It has a fixed daily component, a variable energy component, and a time-of-use overlay.
| Component | Standard user | Low user | What drives it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed daily charge | ~70 to 110 c/day | ~15 to 30 c/day (capped by regulation) | Capacity, sub-network |
| Variable energy charge | ~6 to 11 c/kWh | ~10 to 17 c/kWh (low-user offset phasing out) | Volume + time-of-use window |
| Peak ToU multiplier | Up to ~2x on winter weekday peaks | Same multiplier applies | Cold-evening grid stress (~7-9am, 5-9pm winter) |
Indicative ranges drawn from Wellington Electricity's Pricing Methodology and Commerce Commission Information Disclosure. Exact c/day and c/kWh depend on your ICP's sub-pricing zone. Always check the lines-charge line item on your own bill.
What most pages will not tell you
Three structural facts that change how Wellington Electricity affects your bill
The only foreign-owned lines company in NZ
Wellington Electricity is wholly owned by CK Infrastructure Holdings (CKI), a Hong Kong-headquartered infrastructure group (Cheung Kong family). Every other major NZ lines company is held by a community trust, a council holding entity, or Australian institutional funds. That ownership shape has occasionally surfaced in political debate about strategic infrastructure ownership, but the Commerce Commission regulates Wellington Electricity's prices and reliability the same way it regulates any other distributor.
Built for the next big shake
After the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake, Wellington Electricity accelerated seismic resilience capex: zone substation upgrades on engineered foundations, undergrounding in liquefaction-vulnerable Petone and Lower Hutt corridors, and grid-edge redundancy that lets feeders reconfigure after equipment loss. Wellington's mature underground LV share (above the NZ urban average) is partly a side effect of decades of seismic upgrade work.
Wind, not earthquakes, is the day-to-day outage driver
Wellington records some of the highest sustained wind speeds of any NZ city. Hill suburbs (Karori, Mount Victoria, Eastern Bays) lose overhead lines to wind-thrown branches more often than other comparable suburbs nationwide. Wellington Electricity's undergrounding programme prioritises the most wind-exposed feeders, which is why the central city basin sees near-zero weather outages versus the hill suburb tails.
How to reach Wellington Electricity
Wellington Electricity contact methods, by the reason you are calling
| Reason | Channel | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Power cut, fallen line, network fault | 0800 248 148 | 24/7, free-call |
| Life-threatening hazard | 111, then Wellington Electricity | 24/7 |
| Appliance damage claim | Claim form on Wellington Electricity site | Online, 4 to 8 week processing |
| Planned outage notification | Live status board | 5 to 10 working days notice |
| Billing question | Your retailer (Wellington Electricity does not bill end customers) | Retailer's hours |
| Unresolved complaint | Utilities Disputes (free, independent) | After Wellington Electricity's final written answer |
Where your time actually pays
What a Wellington Electricity household should actually do
You cannot change who delivers your electricity. You can change what you do about it.
Treat hill-suburb addresses as wind-risk addresses
If your ICP is in Karori, Mount Victoria, Roseneath, Wadestown, Khandallah, Eastern Bays or hill Hutt, your outage frequency is structurally higher than the Wellington Electricity SAIDI average. Keep a small UPS for the modem and a charged power bank for the wettest months. Subscribe to outage notifications from welectricity.co.nz.
After a wind event, the damage claim is for equipment failure, not the wind itself
Wellington Electricity, like every NZ distributor, rejects pure force-majeure surge claims. Pivot the claim to equipment failure on restoration: photos of the dead appliance, age, registered electrician's report, outage timestamp from the live map. The framing matters: surges on re-energisation are an equipment event, not a weather event.
Solar approval in Lower Hutt = ask Wellington Electricity early
Lower Hutt's recent suburbs (Wainuiomata, Riverstone Terraces) have legacy LV constraints. Wellington Electricity's distributed generation team publishes a connection process. Get the impact assessment letter before signing the installer contract, especially for inverter sizes above the standard limit. Wellington has comparatively tight export caps relative to the Auckland or Christchurch networks.
The Selectra expert answers
Frequently asked questions about Wellington Electricity
Wellington Electricity's 24/7 fault line is 0800 248 148, free-call. Use it for any power cut, downed line, sparking transformer or noticeable flicker across Wellington, Hutt Valley or Porirua. For an immediate hazard, dial 111 first.
Wellington Electricity Lines Limited is owned by CK Infrastructure Holdings (CKI), a Hong Kong-headquartered infrastructure group. It is the only major NZ lines company under foreign institutional ownership. The Commerce Commission regulates Wellington Electricity's prices and reliability through DPP4 (2025 to 2030).
Above average for NZ. Post-Kaikoura 2016, Wellington Electricity ran a multi-year seismic resilience capex programme: zone substation foundations engineered for ground shaking, prioritised undergrounding in liquefaction-vulnerable corridors (notably Petone-Lower Hutt), and feeder reconfiguration redundancy. Wellington CBD undergrounding share is among the highest of any NZ city.
Wind. Wellington records some of the highest sustained wind speeds of any urban NZ population centre, and hill-suburb feeders (Karori, Mount Victoria, Eastern Bays, Wadestown) carry overhead lines exposed to wind-thrown vegetation. The network SAIDI average looks better than the hill-suburb experience because central-city basins (predominantly underground) pull the average down. Wellington Electricity's undergrounding programme prioritises wind-exposed feeders, but the rollout is multi-year.
Yes, via Wellington Electricity directly (welectricity.co.nz). Include photos of the dead modem, original receipt, age, the outage timestamp from the live status board, and a registered electrician's report linking failure to the surge. Processing 4 to 8 weeks. Equipment-failure surges have higher acceptance than pure wind/weather events (force majeure).
Roughly 30 to 45 per cent for a typical residential ICP. The mix is a fixed daily charge (around 70 to 110 c/day on standard-user tariffs, far lower on the regulated low-user tariff that is being phased out by 2027) plus a variable c/kWh charge with a winter ToU peak multiplier. Your retailer collects it and passes it through to Wellington Electricity under DPP4.
No. Wellington Electricity is the regulated monopoly distributor for Wellington City, Hutt Valley and Porirua. You can switch retailer (Mercury, Genesis, Contact, Electric Kiwi, Octopus, Frank and others) any day, but the Wellington Electricity lines charge is passed through unchanged. North of Plimmerton the network belongs to Electra (see the coverage notes above for the Electra guide).