Power company Genesis wants to ban incandescent light bulbs

Power company Genesis is preparing to launch a petition calling for a ban on incandescent lightbulbs.

A phase-out of the bulbs was proposed in 2008, but the next National government scrapped it.

Consumer NZ called for a ban more than 10 years ago.

Genesis chief revenue officer Stephen England-Hall said it wanted to see the idea revived and had prepared a petition.

"One dollar of electricity buys you 250 hours of LED lighting, but it also will buy you 25 hours of incandescent bulb lighting, so it's 10 times better to have LED bulbs than incandescent bulbs," he said.

"The average house has roughly 15 light bulbs in it, so if you switch from one to the other, you'll save yourself $300 a year in electricity costs."

He said swapping out lightbulbs was a small thing that could be done at relatively low cost to have a big impact.

"It doesn't require, you know, radical re-invention of electricity markets. It just means get rid of inefficient technology and use more efficient technology, and everybody saves money."

Power prices have risen quickly in recent years and the Electricity Authority has taken action, asking power companies to explain increases. It is also implementing new rules that would require gentailers not to favour their own retail arms on price or non-price terms when selling generated power.

England-Hall said people should be encouraged to check they were on the right sort of plan for them, as well as look for efficiency and behavioural changes they could make.

"If you can delay your start to your dishwasher or washing machine or your dryer until evening off-peak times, and you've got a day-night plan, you will save money on your power bill.

"If you've got a hot water cylinder that's on a time control... you can move your heating to off-peak periods. We've done a trial on that at Genesis over the last year, had 17,000 customers participate in that and the amount of energy saved in moving morning peak hot water heating to a different time of day was enough electricity to power 2000 households.

"It doesn't seem like a lot at an individual customer level, but collectively, it's a big impact and the customer didn't notice that the hot water had been heated at a different time."

Genesis research showed that, when asked what changes people thought they could make to reduce their spend on energy, the most common answers were driving less or combining trips, reducing energy use and using public transport.

Most said they were already looking for ways to cut their energy spend, with 79 percent doing so actively. Only 4 percent said they were not looking at all.

Younger New Zealanders were the most likely to be actively looking.

England-Hall said, if people could afford the upfront cost of shifting to things like electric vehicles, they would save.

"It's amazing the impact it has. A dollar of electricity takes you 17-18km in an EV, versus a dollar of diesel taking you three or four kilometres.

"If you're commuting or running the kids to school, the shift is material over a relatively short amount of time.

"More than 70 percent of the people we surveyed would love to reduce their energy spend on the total energy costs, and a lot of people, 50-60 percent of people feel they can make changes themselves and are pretty confident to do it.

"What they need is support and help to find the right plan, switch out the simple stuff, change behaviour."

He said the more power being produced in the network, the lower the average cost could be.

"The more of the economy we electrify, ironically, the unit costs get socialised and so you end up with a much more efficient energy system that's much more secure, that over time lowers the energy costs for everybody.

"I think that's a good thing."

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