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PĀNUI PĀPĀHO / MEDIA STATEMENT

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SEPTEMBER 23, 2026: The Electricity Authority has announced its intention to scope and develop the country’s first electricity innovation sandbox in Queenstown, which will allow innovative ideas to be tested in the real world, safely, with households and businesses. 

A regulatory sandbox is a defined space - in this case the Queenstown-Lakes region - where the regulator agrees to temporarily relax or exempt specific rules in an effort to unlock innovation. It is something Rewiring Aotearoa has been advocating for alongside the Queenstown Lakes District Council, Central Otago District Council and local businesses for some time. 

Rewiring Aotearoa’s research and development lead Josh Ellison says the goal is to “demonstrate energy system improvements that benefit all New Zealanders: cheaper power, more choice, and more resilience for every New Zealand community”. 

“A real sandbox is where kids can build, experiment, and knock things over without breaking anything that matters. An innovation sandbox is the same thing for the electricity system,” he says. “The fences of safety, consumer protection and reliability stay up, but what gets relaxed are the rules that block innovation, not the ones that keep the lights on.”

Jono Barnard, Power Innovation Pathway Manager at the Electricity Authority, says Queenstown-Lakes and Central Otago stood out as a potential sandbox location due to high consumer appetite, community and industry readiness, and location scalability.

Ellison says many of the rules in the electricity sector have not kept pace with technology and do not represent physics or the true costs of energy transfer. 

“They are now creating a disadvantage for energy innovation and customers are bearing the brunt of that through seemingly ever-increasing bills.”

He says New Zealand's electricity market was designed for an era where power flowed one way: from big power stations, down the lines, into your home. 

“But that world is changing. More and more homes now generate their own power with solar, store it in batteries, and drive electric cars that hold more energy than the house uses in days.”

He says consumers are becoming active participants in the energy system and, when combined, they are already one of the country’s largest power stations. 

“In Australia, where the largest power station is 3.2GW, rooftop solar on homes is already about 30GW. New Zealand is following a similar trajectory. Fortunately, the physical design of networks can handle this two-way flow with some innovation, but the market and the rules on top do not accurately understand or economically reflect its potential. The market is holding back a more efficient and lower cost system.” 

Redesigning the system from scratch would be cost prohibitive and even updating the code per current practice is slow, incremental and inadequate.

“That’s why the sandbox makes sense. It’s hard to know what rules are worth changing until you get into the practical realities of on-the-ground deployment.”

Ellison says the concept has been demonstrated overseas. Energy regulators in the UK and Australia have run sandboxes, while financial regulators worldwide have used them to safely test new banking ideas. New Zealand’s Ministry for Regulation has also recently released guidance on and support for innovation sandboxes.

He says it will be an opportunity for homes and businesses to sign up for innovative trials like:

• Solar for Renters (current rules label landlords that sell energy from the roof to tenants as an ‘energy generation company’ and hamper uptake)
• Solar sharing (where businesses with more than one meter often can’t make the most of their solar and are overcharged for energy used via the grid at another meter)
• Plug-in solar (which is currently illegal in New Zealand but expected to be legalised soon)
• Vehicle-to-grid (which allows your EV to run your home or feed back to the grid at peak times through two-way charging; it is allowed under current regulations, but the rules could be improved)
• Or Multiple Trading Relationships (which would enable customers to have more than one relationship on the meter).  

"With Multiple Trading Relationships, what you are currently paid for the energy you sell and what you pay to buy it are controlled by the same company - your energy retailer. This means when you start to generate your own energy as a home or business, your direct competitor controls your access to the market. This is not very economically efficient and consumers have been proven to be getting unfair deals for what they sell back. This is like NZ Post setting the price of emails, there is a clear conflict of interest.”

He says companies could compete to offer higher rates for your export, or you could even sign a trading agreement to sell that energy to your neighbour, or a local community facility, for example. 

“While MTR is being considered nationally, Queenstown could rapidly deploy it within a sandbox, to both benefit the community and provide lessons to the rest of New Zealand.” 

Octopus Energy’s Head of Pricing & Innovation David Charlton says it is excited to join the project and take retail energy innovation out of the lab and into the real world.

“Participating in this pilot allows us to trial next-generation smart offerings, enabling local households and businesses to benefit from the latest tech that Octopus can bring to the market. We’ll be trialing several products designed to help customers reduce energy bills while easing pressure on the local grid.” 

Aurora CEO Richard Fletcher says providing a space to trial new technologies and regulatory approaches will help the region explore innovative ways to support a smarter, more flexible and responsive energy system, while PowerNet CEO Paul Blue says it hopes to test new approaches, learn what works and develop ideas to make better use of the electricity network. 

“Queenstown is an excellent location for us to explore ways we can innovate, while ultimately delivering more choice and value for the region,” Blue says. 

Ellison says retailers and EDBs talk a good game when it comes to innovation and customer focus and this is a chance to prove they can improve the system before regulation forces them to. 

“That will mean they are ready to provide new offers or new pricing signals to consumers across the country. We saw this with EDBs who for years paid consumers nothing for exporting at peak, contrary to the direct evidence that it benefitted them. This year they are regulated to have to pay consumers fairly when they contribute to lowering peak. This is an opportunity to work through these things with the community, with innovators, and to be ready.” 

Technology providers can also demonstrate how their energy products and solutions work in the real world. 

Ellison is also co-lead at the Queenstown Electrification Accelerator (QEA), a pilot project supported by Rewiring Aotearoa. It develops ideas locally that can be scaled up nationally and is focused on building the blueprint for a better energy system. 

QEA is supported by Destination Queenstown, Queenstown Lakes Council, Central Lakes Trust and EECA, and he says Queenstown has all the ingredients required to make this sandbox work. 

“There’s an energised community through the Electrify Queenstown conference and the QEA, a constrained network with a genuinely hard investment decision ahead of it with the Queenstown Line Upgrade, strong resilience needs given the Alpine Fault risk, high adoption rates of solar, batteries and EVs, and strong local leadership. It’s also running the first community Vehicle-To-Grid trial in the country, and other energy related trials like Solar For Renters.”

ENDS

‍More information about the sandbox is available on the QEA website. 

Images of Rewiring Aotearoa’s Josh Ellison are available here. 

To arrange an interview, contact Ben Fahy at ben@rewiring.nz or 021 245 4894. 

Rewiring Aotearoa is an independent charity working on energy, climate and electrification research, advocacy and education. The New Zealand-based team consists of energy, policy, communications and community outreach experts and it is funded by New Zealand-based philanthropists. While we are selling the achievable dream of a more secure, resilient, productive, affordable and renewable energy system, we do not financially benefit from sales of solar, EVs or any of the electric technologies we advocate for.

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