February 17, 2026
This is a question we get asked all the time - and for good reason. Home electricity meters can be really confusing!
The good news is that understanding your electricity meter does not need to be complicated.
Your meter records how much power your home uses, measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh). One kWh is roughly the energy used by a 1,000-watt appliance running for an hour.
So, say you’ve got a 2kW bar heater, then this will use 2 kWh every hour it’s switched on.
Below is a quick guide to the types of meters you might see here in New Zealand, and how to read them.
Some older homes still use traditional meters, which require manual readings.
These usually come in two forms:
Old dial electricity meters cannot show when electricity is used, which means they do not support off-peak or time-of-use pricing.
Traditional meters also need to be read manually and can’t ‘communicate’ with us, so for this reason we can only onboard customers to Toast who have smart meters.
If you have a traditional meter, either upgrade to a smart meter before you join us, or check other retailers who can supply you with power (using tools like Billy or Powerswitch).
Smart electricity meters are now installed in most New Zealand homes and are the industry standard.
They automatically record your electricity use every 30 minutes and send readings remotely to the meter company that owns the meter. Your daily data is sent via the cell phone network once a day, usually in one 5-second burst, just after midnight. The meter company then sends the usage data to Toast with a 2-day lag (no manual meter read required). We use this data to work out your total monthly usage and to create our bills. Because they track usage by time, smart meters allow access to plans like our day and night ‘time-of-use' pricing (which we offer here at Toast). This plan can help lower your power bill if it suits your household to shift your usage habits.
If you are on more than one rate, e.g. day/night, uncontrolled/controlled, your smart meter will show separate readings for each. The display will usually scroll through these automatically, or you can press a button on the meter to cycle through them.
This is your everyday electricity, available at all times for general use. On a smart meter the current 'Uncontrolled' reading is usually shown on the screen with “24h” on the left-hand side.
Often used for hot water or heating systems. Supply may be briefly turned off during peak demand, which is why it is usually cheaper. On a smart meter this is usually shown as “ctrl”. Controlled supply is always paired with another 24/7 supply like 'Uncontrolled', so the power to the whole house is not switched off during cold nights in winter (when your cylinder is). On these meters you’ll usually see two usage screens: “24h” for the uncontrolled register, and “ctrl” for the controlled register.
Some homes have a single meter that measures power flowing through the uncontrolled and controlled circuits and combines it as a “composite”. Total usage is measured, and in most areas the tariff is somewhere between the uncontrolled and controlled price. Many modern composite meters are digital and will show a single set of numbers (kWh).
These track power use on two different registers. Power used during the day (7am-9pm) is shown as “day” and power used during the night (9pm-7am) is shown as “night”.
Need help choosing a plan? If you use under 8000 kWh/year in the North Island, or 9000 kWh/year in the South Island, you may be better off on our low user plan. If you use over 35% of your power from 9pm-7am, you may be better off on a day/night plan, with higher day rates in exchange for up to half price power at night.
If you're not sure whether you have a smart meter or not, we're here to help - just flick us an email: hello@toastelectric.nz
You can also check out the Electricity Authority’s page on meters for more information.
Keen to make a change just by switching power companies? Toast operates on a 4:1 giving model. This means for every four households that sign up with Toast, we provide electricity support to one household in need.
Signing up takes just five minutes. To sign up today, go to https://signup.toastelectric.nz/ now.