Your electricity bill

You can check if another electricity company is cheaper for you. Go to Consumer Powerswitch.

First you need your electricity bill which shows you which company supplies your electricity and what kind of plan you are on. Many people are on a night day plan. This gives them cheaper electricity at night from 9pm until 7am the next morning. This is useful for people who use some appliances at night like a washing machine or dryer. On a night day plan, it’s cheaper to heat a hot water cylinder overnight. The water usually stays hot for many hours. However, if you have only a small hot water cylinder, or if you like a hot bath in the evening, you might run out of hot water before 9pm.

Consumer Powerswitch is a Consumer New Zealand website. Consumer New Zealand tests products to tell you which ones they recommend. This is useful information when you want to buy an expensive item such as a TV set or lawn mower. It gives information about your rights when you buy a product and it doesn’t work properly. You can join Consumer New Zealand, or use Consumer New Zealand website for limited information, or borrow their monthly magazine from your library.

Vocabulary

• consumer – anyone who buys or uses a product is a consumer
• overnight – during the night; (you can also say ‘over the weekend’, ‘over the holidays’, but not ‘over day’)
• cylinder – a can is a cylinder shape; hot water cylinders are large and usually in a separate cupboard
• run out of – useful idiom meaning ‘no longer have enough’
• recommend – tell you this is the best one to buy
• limited information – only some information, not the full information