Application of electricity legislation consultation

Summary

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) invites you to submit your views on the questions and proposals set out in this consultation document – Electricity legislation: Consultation on the application of electricity legislation to secondary networks and publically accessible charging infrastructure for electric vehicles.

The consultation document sets out issues related to some of the definitions in our electricity legislation, and the related impact on rights and requirements under that legislation and regulations.

The issues identified in this paper relate to:

• Secondary networks – some ambiguity in the definition of an electricity distributor has recently been identified. This raises uncertainty around whether owners of secondary networks are electricity distributors for the purposes of the Electricity Industry Act.
• Publically accessible electric vehicle charging infrastructure – some potential ambiguity exists with regards to how charging infrastructure is classified under electricity legislation. This could be creating uncertainty for both access rights and the electrical safety requirements that apply to this infrastructure.

These issues have implications for market, consumer and electrical safety outcomes that can potentially only be resolved through legislative changes.

We seek your views and comment to help inform decisions about how definitions under electricity legislation and associated requirements should apply to secondary networks and publicly accessible charging infrastructure for electric vehicles.