Under section 11 of the Electricity Industry Act 2010 (“Act”), the Electricity Authority gives the following notice.

Notice

1. Title and commencement—(1) This notice is the Electricity Industry (Exemption No. 272 (Advanced Metering Services Limited)) Exemption Notice 2018.

(2) This notice comes into force on the day after the date it is notified in the New Zealand Gazette.

2. Exemption—Advanced Metering Services Limited (“AMS”) is exempted from complying with the obligation in clause 45(2)(c) and 45(2)(d) of Schedule 10.7 of the Electricity Industry Participation Code 2010 (“Code”) to identify and select the minimum number of installations set out in Table 8 of Schedule 10.1 of the Code.

3. Term—This exemption expires on 1 January 2019.

4. Reasons for granting the exemption—The reasons for granting this exemption are:

1. if the exemption is not granted, as a result of AMS’s misinterpretation of the Code AMS will face significant costs to recertify all affected metering installations. These costs will ultimately be passed to consumers via the meter lease fee;
2. AMS has an inspection regime and is attempting to inspect the minimum number of metering installations for 2018;
3. the inspections AMS has performed to date have found no serious or systemic issues that would indicate the affected metering installations are not accurate or fit for purpose;
4. the exemption will have no impact on any other participant or service provider and will not affect any other Code provision; and
5. granting the requested exemption meets the requirements in section 11(2) of the Act.

Dated at Wellington this 4th day of December 2018.

For and on behalf of the Electricity Authority:
SUSAN PATERSON, onzm, Member, Electricity Authority.