At a glance
Amazon Web Services and Datagrid are two of the 15 members of the Major Electricity Users' Group, which published its election manifesto on 14 September 2026.
Karen Boyes is asking every party to make affordable and secure electricity a priority for all consumers, from large industry to households.
The manifesto asks for a transmission charging framework built on transparency, predictability and fair allocation.
Large new connections should keep paying their fair share while the economic benefit they bring is recognised, it says.
MEUG's own release welcoming Datagrid cites Analysys Mason putting the Southland project at up to NZ$3.7 billion of GDP a year.
New Zealand's largest electricity users set out what they want from the 7 November election on 14 September 2026. The Major Electricity Users' Group, a trade association representing 15 of the country's heaviest power consumers, published a policy manifesto titled Abundant Electricity for Economic Growth and Productivity, with six things it wants the next government to do. Its media release led on getting better value from the 28 local lines companies, whose charges account for about a quarter of a power bill.
Data centres have been part of the power conversation here since 14 August 2026, when National said new projects should come with new generation attached, and Labour set out its own conditions on 9 September. The manifesto puts the country's large industrial buyers into the same conversation, with an answer built around supply.
Two of the group's 15 members are data centre businesses, Amazon Web Services and Datagrid, and the manifesto asks for the three things that make a new campus investable: transmission charges a business can forecast, a steady pipeline of generation projects, and networks funded to build capacity before the demand arrives. It also puts on the record that large new connections bring economic and infrastructure benefits worth recognising, while continuing to pay their fair share.
Amazon Web Services and Datagrid are two of the 15 members
The membership list is mostly heavy industry, with Fonterra, New Zealand Steel, Woolworths, Oji Fibre Solutions, Pan Pac Forest Products and OceanaGold among them. Two are in data centres. Amazon Web Services appears for its Asia Pacific (New Zealand) region, the Auckland cloud region it opened on 1 September 2025. Amazon expects to spend more than NZ$7.5 billion on it over 15 years. Datagrid appears for the NZ$3.5 billion campus it is building at Makarewa, 7 kilometres north of Invercargill, and for the Tasman Ring subsea cable. It has pre-paid Transpower for four transformers to feed the substation that campus will run on.
The manifesto counts data centres among its member industries on its own opening page, alongside pulp and paper, steel, meat, dairy and cold storage. The group puts its members' combined revenue above NZ$30 billion a year and their direct employment at 20,000.
Boyes said when Datagrid joined that the group would keep advocating for fair prices and forward-looking energy policy so firms like it can compete, grow and create jobs in New Zealand. That release cites Analysys Mason estimating the Makarewa project could support GDP gains of up to NZ$3.7 billion a year. The same estimate puts construction and operation together at up to 10,000 jobs.
The group wants transmission charges a business can forecast
Transmission charges pay for the national grid Transpower runs, and the rules dividing those charges between customers are set by the Electricity Authority. The current rules took effect on 1 April 2023. They work by identifying which groups of customers benefit from each piece of grid investment, then spreading the remaining cost across everyone else.
The manifesto asks for a framework with greater transparency, predictability, fair allocation principles and the ability for a customer to forecast its future transmission costs accurately. It wants the Authority directed to test whether the whole method still serves the energy transition, and wants that review to go further than the amendments now under way.
Karen Boyes, the group's executive director, told RNZ what the present method costs a business. "It's a very technical, complex methodology that even some of our very sophisticated members are having to get consultants to come help calculate their charges," she said, adding that a business can know its costs this year and then find next year's depend on which other projects join the grid. Transmission is about 8 per cent of an average household bill on the Electricity Authority's own breakdown, against 24.5 per cent for the local lines companies and 38.5 per cent for generation, and Boyes said it takes a larger share for members buying straight from the grid.
That is worth real money to this sector. Eleven data centre projects have reached the stage where Transpower works out what connecting them would take, a gigawatt between them, and every business case behind them has to price the grid over a decade.
The manifesto backs a steady pipeline of generation projects
Backup supply, which the industry calls firming, is what keeps the system running when demand is high and wind and solar are not producing. In New Zealand it also covers dry years, when there is less water in the hydro lakes. The manifesto asks the government to keep the conditions right for building generation, and says a deeper pipeline should lower the price generators charge, which benefits every consumer. It leaves the renewable share to the market and expects hydro to take a larger role in firming over time. Boyes framed the whole document that way, calling on every party to make affordable and secure electricity a priority for all consumers, from large industry to everyday households.
On backup specifically it asks for four things: a market for backup and flexible supply, a closer look at what lake storage can contribute, stronger rules so businesses are paid properly for cutting their use when the system is tight, and a legislated responsibility for the Electricity Authority to manage dry-year risk. Generators are the parties best placed to build that capacity, the document says, so that is where it would look for it.
That sits alongside what the parties have proposed. The National Party's South Island plan of 14 August 2026 wants data centre projects accompanied by new, firmed generation, meaning new supply with backup behind it. Labour's AI policy of 9 September 2026 carries four conditions, covering renewable supply, connection costs, cutting power use when the grid is stretched, and water. New Zealand added 368 megawatts of renewable generating capacity through 2025, on Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment figures.
All three want new load matched by new supply, and all three agree a business that cuts its electricity use when the system is tight should be paid properly for doing so. That is the one condition a data centre can meet from inside the building, and the manifesto wants the settings behind it strengthened.
The group asks network owners to help fund the build
The fourth of the six asks is about how networks are funded. The group wants the government to refresh Part 4 of the Commerce Act, the law under which the Commerce Commission regulates Transpower and the 28 local lines companies, and to look at how network investment is funded where a network builds capacity before the demand for it arrives.
Commerce Commission-sanctioned increases in transmission and lines charges began in 2025 and run to 2030. Average household electricity costs rose 11.7 per cent in the March quarter against a year earlier, driven primarily by network charges on the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's count. The group wants approaches that share the cost of new capacity between current and future customers on the grid, rather than the whole bill reaching existing customers first.
It also asks that the owners of the networks be considered as a source of borrowing or of their own capital for building and replacing equipment. For the 28 lines companies that means trusts, councils and private shareholders. For Transpower it means the Crown, which owns all of it. On new connections the manifesto is explicit that transparent cost allocation should keep large-scale users paying their fair share of system costs while the wider economic and infrastructure benefits those connections bring are also recognised.
What to watch
Watch for a National or Labour position on network charges before 7 November, because the group has put them on the election agenda. Watch the Electricity Authority, which is consulting on amendments and would be the body asked to rebuild the transmission pricing method. Watch whether any party picks up the market for backup and flexible supply, which the manifesto attributes to the OECD's 2026 economic survey of New Zealand. And watch the membership list, because the case for a better-run electricity system is now being made by a group that speaks for dairy, steel, supermarkets and two data centre companies at once.