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More than 10,000 households a month have their power disconnected, new data shows.
The Electricity Authority has published a new disconnections for non-payment dashboard, including prepay customers who have been disconnected.
It shows that between January and October, for people on contract accounts, there are an average of 810 disconnections a month.
For 44 percent of them, they lasted less than one day.
Prepay customers were disconnected more often. There were 27,000 disconnections a month affecting 10,000 prepay customers, or 35 percent. Prepay customers are automatically disconnected when they run out of credit.
Almost 60 percent were disconnected more than once but 94 percent lasted less than one day.
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Kate Day, co-director of Common Grace Aotearoa, said the data was helpful to help address the problem.
"We are particularly sobered to see data on prepay disconnections. Prepay is used by roughly 28,000 households and is a last resort for many low-income people with poor credit history who can no longer access standard plans.
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