New Zealand's wholesale electricity market opened in October 1996. In the 30 years since, the price at Haywards, the North Island's reference point, has averaged $81/MWh. That average hides a market that swings hard: it set its most expensive month in August 2024, at $465/MWh, and its cheapest just 17 months later, in January 2026, at $3.52.
- Most expensive month
- $465/MWh
- August 2024
- Cheapest month
- $3.52/MWh
- January 2026
- Average, 1997–2017
- $62/MWh
- Haywards
- Average, 2018–2023
- $120/MWh
- Haywards, about twice as high
- Haywards (North Island)
- Benmore (South Island)
Two decades of cheap power, broken by dry years
For its first two decades the market mostly ran between $30 and $80/MWh. The spikes were dry years, when the hydro lakes ran low: 2001, 2003, 2005–06 and 2008, when June averaged $306/MWh. Each time the price fell back once the rain came. Haywards and Benmore usually moved together, a few dollars apart.
Data table
| Year | Haywards |
|---|---|
| 1997 | $45/MWh |
| 1998 | $35/MWh |
| 1999 | $33/MWh |
| 2000 | $33/MWh |
| 2001 | $80/MWh |
| 2002 | $40/MWh |
| 2003 | $83/MWh |
| 2004 | $37/MWh |
| 2005 | $74/MWh |
| 2006 | $79/MWh |
| 2007 | $52/MWh |
| 2008 | $125/MWh |
| 2009 | $46/MWh |
| 2010 | $61/MWh |
| 2011 | $63/MWh |
| 2012 | $82/MWh |
| 2013 | $68/MWh |
| 2014 | $75/MWh |
| 2015 | $67/MWh |
| 2016 | $55/MWh |
| 2017 | $77/MWh |
| 2018 | $106/MWh |
| 2019 | $113/MWh |
| 2020 | $105/MWh |
| 2021 | $166/MWh |
| 2022 | $114/MWh |
| 2023 | $119/MWh |
| 2024 | $195/MWh |
| 2025 | $149/MWh |
| 2026* | $64/MWh |
A higher floor from 2018
From 2018 the floor lifted. Haywards averaged $62/MWh from 1997 to 2017 and $120 from 2018 to 2023, about twice as much, and stayed above $100 even in years without a serious drought. Eight months averaged above $150/MWh in those first 21 years; eighteen did in the next six. The reason, explored in Part 3, is gas: as the gas fields declined, the backup that hydro relies on in a dry year became scarce and expensive, and that raised the value of the water in the lakes.
Then came the two extremes. 2024 set the record, with a dry winter and short gas pushing August to $465/MWh. Two summers later the lakes were overflowing and a wave of new geothermal was running, and January 2026 averaged $3.52. So far 2026 has been the cheapest year since 2016, at $64/MWh to the end of September. Part 4 looks at those two months side by side.