A new home energy saver project in Auckland, with co-funding from Auckland Council and Vector, could see participating homes save up to $500 on their power bills per year.

Auckland Council and Vector have partnered with energy-efficiency company Ecobulb to help 500 south and west Auckland households struggling with the cost-of-living, to save on their power bills.

It involves a team of local energy advisors providing Aucklanders with free personalised home energy assessments.

These energy assessments calculate the potential energy savings from various energy efficiency actions and suggest the lowest cost electricity retail plan suitable for each home.

Free Ecobulb LED light bulbs and free energy efficient shower heads are provided at the end of the energy assessments.

“This initiative helps improve energy efficiency and economic outcomes for Auckland residents through creating more efficient homes that reduce power bills,” says Adrian Feasey, Auckland Council’s Climate Action Solutions Team Manager.

“Auckland Council is excited to partner with Vector to support this project, and take further steps towards a sustainable future for all residents of Tāmaki Makaurau.”

Advice on other free easy to implement changes such as cleaning heat pump filters, showing people how to use their heat pump most efficiently and emptying and turning off partially filled old second fridges is also provided.
Ecobulb Managing Director Chris Mardon said the average household could save $500 per year on their power bills.

“This could have cumulative savings of $255,000 across all participating households,” he said.

Peter Ryan, Vector’s chief operating officer electricity gas and fibre, said the company was pleased to support Ecobulb’s initiative: “We strongly support using energy more efficiently and options to reduce power bills for customers. We’re pleased to get behind Ecobulb and help more households benefit from this home energy saver programme and continue to gather more data on the benefits of these sorts of initiatives”.

A 2020 study from the University of Otago estimated that ‘more efficient residential lighting could reduce New Zealand’s winter peak by 500MW’ which would be ‘roughly equivalent to avoiding the need for additional generation capacity of the scale of New Zealand’s Huntly Power Stations 1-4(coal/gas) and the Stratford Peaker plant’¹.

¹ Dortans, Carsten, et al. "Lightening the load: quantifying the potential for energy-efficient lighting to reduce peaks in electricity demand." Energy Efficiency 13.6 (2020): 1105-1118.

Christchurch company Ecobulb (formerly Energy Mad) has a goal to “Save enough electricity to power New Zealand for one year”. With approximately 25 Million “Ecobulb” energy saving light bulbs installed in an estimated 3.4 million New Zealand, Australian and United States homes, and having completed energy assessments in 43,000 New Zealand homes, Ecobulb is 64% of the way to achieving our goal. These Ecobulbs are saving an estimated $6.0 billion in electricity costs and 19 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emission reductions.

Vector is an innovative New Zealand energy company, which runs a portfolio of businesses delivering energy and communication services to more than 600,000 residential and commercial customers across New Zealand. Vector has a leading role in creating a new energy future through its Symphony strategy, which puts customers at the heart of the energy system. Vector is listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange with ticker symbol VCT. Our majority shareholder, with voting rights of 75.1%, is Entrust. For further information