Frank Energy is a low cost NZ Power Provider. It is powered by Genesis
One of the power providers we currently use is Frank Energy, new power brand powered by Genesis Energy. Frank Energy used to be called Energy Online but has since been rebranded with a fresh new look and name.
We found Frank Energy prices to be competitive with other similar lower priced power brands, when comparing power companies on the Power Switch Website. The main reason we specifically signed up to Frank Energy was because they still offered the Low Power User daily rate. Many power companies are putting their Low Power User daily rate up every year for the next 5 years, so this is going to increase many low power users bills by a lot.
Update- Since we wrote this article, Frank Energy has announced in December 2022 that they are getting rid of the Low Daily power user rate,. So the daily rate will be doubling in price from 34.5 cents per day, to 69 cents per day. It appears that the Low Daily power user rate will also continue to rise in price over the next 5 years.
Another reason we chose Frank Energy was because they clearly displayed their energy pricing on their website, and you can 'tick a box' to make sure the pricing displays GST inclusive pricing. This made it easy for us to understand their prices. Also the price of power was the same throughout the day. This means that we can live our normal life, without trying to use most of our power during off-peak times, in order to save money on electricity.
During our research we found far too many power providers make it too difficult to find the prices, or the prices and different plans are far too complex to understand. In particular we found the Frank Energy gas pricing was not only cheaper than other companies at the time we had researched prices in our area, but prices and information was also clearly displayed and far easier to understand. When looking for gas prices, we found that most other gas providers we had to email or phone to find out their current prices in our area, and the prices varied significantly.
Frank Energy does provide an App where you can track our usage. Unfortunately the figures it provides are delayed by around a day. So you can't track your real time usage. In other countries like the UK, electricity providers allow real time electricity usage tracking. We would like to see this in NZ, so consumers can easily see how they can save power during the day, and manage their usage to save power and money.
The Frank Energy app allows you to break down usage to the hour, as well as see previous days and months. We found the iOS app to be good and responsive, however the Android app is very slow to load and sometimes crashes. We think that Frank Energy need to provide a more reliable Android app.
Frank Energy could be the ideal power company for those low power users who are looking at saving money on power, and don't want any gimmicks or addons. However if you are a high power user, there are a number of other providers that may offer better value and more benefits to you. For example Kiwi Electric offer a free hour of power each day, and on and off peak rates. This is great if you can plan to do many of your high demand tasks during that free hour. We have a Electric Kiwi Referral Code which you can use to get a free $50 credit if you use it to sign up to Electric Kiwi.
We recommend that NZ consumers regularly check the prices they are paying for their power through their power company. We suggest doing it at least once a year, especially in these current times of rapidly increasing prices. If you shop around you can save a lot of money each year. Prices can quickly change and prices can vary a lot around the country.
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