Power companies put their prices up on April 1. I read about it on RNZ, which also mentioned a Government comparison tool I hadn’t heard of before. That was enough to check it out even though I haven’t even been with my current power provider for a year.

The tool is Billy. You upload your bill and it does the comparisons for you. No manual data entry, no calculations. I had results in a few seconds. It feels more trustworthy than PowerSwitch, which has always felt a bit salesy to me.

So I uploaded my last bill with Meridian which was $162.20 and includes $10 credit for new customers. When the results came through, two options were worth a closer look: Electric Kiwi and SUPA.

Electric Kiwi gives you a free hour of power each day. To get real value from it you need to shift your heavy usage, washing machine, dishwasher, dryer, into that window. That’s not something I was willing to organise my evenings around though.

I’d never heard of SUPA before. They seem relatively new, but they were the cheapest by far. Their plan is called Purple Pancake, which is a bizarre name for a power plan, but it came in at an estimated $149 on the same usage. That’s $11 less a month. Once my offer with Meridian runs out, it’s an even better deal.

I was intrigued and checked out their website. SUPA installs solar panels on schools, businesses and community clubs at no upfront cost. Those sites feed power back into the grid, which is where your supply comes from. The price was the main reason I switched. The community angle made it an easy decision.

I switched yesterday and I’m now just waiting for the setup to be completed.

The whole thing took about twenty minutes. If your bill went up this week and you haven’t looked around, go to billy.govt.nz and upload your last statement. You might find you’re already on a good deal. You might save $20 a month. Worth knowing either way.