Watt on earth? The case of the impossible power bill

Thursday, 16 July 2026

Had the heat pump suddenly gone nuclear? Anything is possible in this house.

Virginia Fallon is a staff writer and columnist based in Wellington and was named Best Columnist at the 2026 New Zealand Media Awards.

OPINION: Last week I opened my latest power bill and did what any sensible person would do.

First I shrieked, then I checked the address, then the account number, then the name, and then I checked them all again.

Then I stared at the whole bill for a very long time, convinced there had been some sort of administrative error.

Because either the power company had billed me for the entire street, or someone had quietly installed an aluminium smelter in my garage.

I live in an ordinary house with one small dog, two cats and no obvious reason to be consuming the same amount of electricity as a medium-sized country.

I don’t leave lights blazing all night, and I’m careful with the hair dryer. The jug is used only in the morning, and the oven hardly ever.

Also, as far as I know, nobody’s been breaking in to take a 45-minute shower or run an illicit laundromat.

And yet, according to my power company, I appear to be personally keeping the national grid afloat.

Somewhere there had to be a culprit. Something, somewhere in the house, is chewing through electricity like a teenager through cereal.

Like any good detective, I worked methodically through the rooms, eyeing each appliance with growing suspicion.

The heat pump was the obvious place to start, mainly because it has an uncanny ability to make me feel guilty every time I press the remote.

Had it suddenly gone nuclear? Was it secretly running all night while I slept? Quite possibly, but I don't actually know how to tell.

Next came the dryer. While these white, whirring money pits chew through electricity as quickly as they lose socks, mine had a solid alibi. I only use it in genuine emergencies, like when there’s an urgent need for clean underwear.

The hot water cylinder was, as usual, impossible to read. It sits there all day, silent and inscrutable, quietly conducting its business behind closed doors.

But it also runs on gas which means A, I'm permanently convinced it's about to explode and B, it’s innocent on the electricity front.

By now the investigation had moved beyond reality and into panic.

I found myself unplugging chargers with nothing attached to them, glaring suspiciously at the microwave clock, and wondering exactly how much electricity WiFi uses when it's just … waiting.

Sometimes the call is coming from outside the house.

I became convinced that the television wasn’t really off, the air fryer had learnt to switch itself on, while every tiny green standby light in the house suddenly looked less like a convenience and more like an accomplice.

Next, paranoia.

I checked the garage for an electric car, the courtyard for a spa pool, and the backyard for a pottery kiln. Then I marched the perimeter in case the neighbours had run a power cord under the fence.

Eventually, and with considerable reluctance, I was forced to confront the fact I had been studiously avoiding.

Not only have power prices risen 20% in the past two years, in April the Electricity Authority warned most households would face another increase of about 8% this winter.

Suddenly my mystery looked a lot less mysterious. The problem wasn’t my house; the problem was the power.

There was no rogue appliance. No neighbour siphoning electricity. No secret hydroponics humming away under the stairs.

Finally, I called the power company.

“Finding it hard to pay your bill?”, it says on its website, “our dedicated team is here to help.”

So I rang, waited, and listened to the hold music.

I waited and listened for so long that I had to plug my phone in to charge.