As part of our application for a customised price-quality path, we're committed to working closely with you – our customers, stakeholders and community – to ensure our planning aligns with your needs and priorities.
To help shape the proposed investment approach outlined in our 2025 AMP Update, we gained insights from our community through our regular engagement channels, summarised below.
We're now keen to hear from a much wider group of customers and stakeholders. Your views will help us refine our plans and develop our customised path proposal.
We're consulting on our proposed investment approach
How to have to have your say
Our 2025 Asset Management Plan Update includes our proposed investment approach, and we’re seeking feedback on this.
We’re particularly keen to hear from customers, stakeholders and the community in our network area.
We want to understand what matters most to you.
Your input will help shape our customised path proposal, which will be submitted to the Commerce Commission in mid-2026.
Our consultation is open until 30 May 2025.
Click below to complete our short questionnaire.
Read about our proposed investment approach in our 2025 AMP Update
Our engagement approach
As well as completing our questionnaire or providing feedback using the contact details below, we have four engagement activity streams to ensure we use different methods and channels to reach our diverse customer, stakeholder and community sectors.
Customer Advisory Panel: A series of sessions that bring together community representatives to share insights on customer needs and provide feedback on our investment plans, supported by an independent advisor for balanced perspectives.
Powerful Conversations: Focused community workshops that use a knowledge stacking framework to explore complex issues with customers. We work with a research partner to run these conversations to ensure research grade outputs and insights.
Connected Conversations: Online forums and meetings with Orion business customers, industry representatives, and community organisations to foster stakeholder engagement.
Community Conversations: This activity stream focuses on engaging the wider community through advertising, web and social media updates, customer surveys with our research partner, and our Community Update newsletter, delivered with The Star to around 110,000 households.
Our earlier engagement
As part of our commitment to understanding and responding to customer and community needs, we regularly engage through the following channels:
Customer Perceptions Survey: This is an annualsurvey of 800 to 1,000 residential and business customers. It seeks views on what matters most, and where we should focus our investment.
Powerful Conversations: Through these workshops, we engage with both urban and rural customers to explore key topics in depth. These sessions enhance our understanding of your perspectives and highlight how priorities like reliability, resilience, and growth are interconnected.
Communications and community engagement: We keep you informed through a range of platforms, including our website, social media, community newsletter, targeted emails, and local events.
We have used these channels to share early thinking on our plans for the coming years and to seek our customers’ views.
Our Customer Advisory Panel meetings began in 2024, with the first two sessions in October and November focusing on our reasons for applying for a customised path and gathering initial feedback from panel members. In February 2025, we discussed our proposed investment approach, followed by a deeper exploration of resilience and reliability at the March meeting.
In our most recent Powerful Conversations workshops, we engaged with around 80 customers from urban, rural, and Banks Peninsula communities. We explained our investment drivers and sought participants’ views on which areas were their top priority.
What we've heard so far
Through our early engagement, we've heard that our customers’ main priorities are maintaining the reliability of our network and building its resilience, but affordability is also important. In short, you want electricity that is available when you need it, at an affordable price.
Our Customer Advisory Panel emphasised that safety, reliability, and resilience are essential now and in the future, though price increases are a key concern, particularly for vulnerable community members.
In our workshops, participants initially said that reliability and resilience were their top priorities. However, as their knowledge grew, they developed a deeper understanding of how our key investment areas are interconnected. For example, they recognised that expanding and upgrading our network capacity to support growing demand is also important to maintain the reliability of supply.
Our 2024 Customer Perceptions Survey showed that minimising outages and restoring power quickly are top priorities. Over 80% were satisfied with reliability, and overall customer satisfaction was high. Respondents also expressed a desire to see the network ready for the future, with us taking advantage of new technologies, improving efficiency, and remaining reliable.
We’ll keep this page updated with anonymised feedback from our customers and community to ensure transparency while sharing insights gathered throughout the consultation process.
In this video, find out more about how we’re engaging with the community representatives from our Customer Advisory Panel to help shape our customised path planning.
As part of our application for a customised price-quality path, we're committed to working closely with you – our customers, stakeholders and community – to ensure our planning aligns with your needs and priorities.
To help shape the proposed investment approach outlined in our 2025 AMP Update, we gained insights from our community through our regular engagement channels, summarised below.
We're now keen to hear from a much wider group of customers and stakeholders. Your views will help us refine our plans and develop our customised path proposal.
We're consulting on our proposed investment approach
How to have to have your say
Our 2025 Asset Management Plan Update includes our proposed investment approach, and we’re seeking feedback on this.
We’re particularly keen to hear from customers, stakeholders and the community in our network area.
We want to understand what matters most to you.
Your input will help shape our customised path proposal, which will be submitted to the Commerce Commission in mid-2026.
Our consultation is open until 30 May 2025.
Click below to complete our short questionnaire.
Read about our proposed investment approach in our 2025 AMP Update
Our engagement approach
As well as completing our questionnaire or providing feedback using the contact details below, we have four engagement activity streams to ensure we use different methods and channels to reach our diverse customer, stakeholder and community sectors.
Customer Advisory Panel: A series of sessions that bring together community representatives to share insights on customer needs and provide feedback on our investment plans, supported by an independent advisor for balanced perspectives.
Powerful Conversations: Focused community workshops that use a knowledge stacking framework to explore complex issues with customers. We work with a research partner to run these conversations to ensure research grade outputs and insights.
Connected Conversations: Online forums and meetings with Orion business customers, industry representatives, and community organisations to foster stakeholder engagement.
Community Conversations: This activity stream focuses on engaging the wider community through advertising, web and social media updates, customer surveys with our research partner, and our Community Update newsletter, delivered with The Star to around 110,000 households.
Our earlier engagement
As part of our commitment to understanding and responding to customer and community needs, we regularly engage through the following channels:
Customer Perceptions Survey: This is an annualsurvey of 800 to 1,000 residential and business customers. It seeks views on what matters most, and where we should focus our investment.
Powerful Conversations: Through these workshops, we engage with both urban and rural customers to explore key topics in depth. These sessions enhance our understanding of your perspectives and highlight how priorities like reliability, resilience, and growth are interconnected.
Communications and community engagement: We keep you informed through a range of platforms, including our website, social media, community newsletter, targeted emails, and local events.
We have used these channels to share early thinking on our plans for the coming years and to seek our customers’ views.
Our Customer Advisory Panel meetings began in 2024, with the first two sessions in October and November focusing on our reasons for applying for a customised path and gathering initial feedback from panel members. In February 2025, we discussed our proposed investment approach, followed by a deeper exploration of resilience and reliability at the March meeting.
In our most recent Powerful Conversations workshops, we engaged with around 80 customers from urban, rural, and Banks Peninsula communities. We explained our investment drivers and sought participants’ views on which areas were their top priority.
What we've heard so far
Through our early engagement, we've heard that our customers’ main priorities are maintaining the reliability of our network and building its resilience, but affordability is also important. In short, you want electricity that is available when you need it, at an affordable price.
Our Customer Advisory Panel emphasised that safety, reliability, and resilience are essential now and in the future, though price increases are a key concern, particularly for vulnerable community members.
In our workshops, participants initially said that reliability and resilience were their top priorities. However, as their knowledge grew, they developed a deeper understanding of how our key investment areas are interconnected. For example, they recognised that expanding and upgrading our network capacity to support growing demand is also important to maintain the reliability of supply.
Our 2024 Customer Perceptions Survey showed that minimising outages and restoring power quickly are top priorities. Over 80% were satisfied with reliability, and overall customer satisfaction was high. Respondents also expressed a desire to see the network ready for the future, with us taking advantage of new technologies, improving efficiency, and remaining reliable.
We’ll keep this page updated with anonymised feedback from our customers and community to ensure transparency while sharing insights gathered throughout the consultation process.
In this video, find out more about how we’re engaging with the community representatives from our Customer Advisory Panel to help shape our customised path planning.
Page last updated: 23 Apr 2025, 11:45 AM
Our engagement timeline
Customer advisory panel photos
Customer insight
Videos
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Planning the future of our network
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What a CPP is and why we need one
Orion’s Chief Executive Nigel Barbour discusses the challenges and opportunities we face. He explains why applying for a customised price-quality path – or CPP – is essential to investing more in our network.
Orion's network area
Share your feedback
The simplest way to share your views is by completing our consultation questionnaire. However, you can also email or write to us using the contact details below.
Post: The Orion Group, 565 Wairakei Road, Burnside, Christchurch 8053
We value your input and look forward to hearing from you.
Read our Community Update
Read our April 2025 Community Update newsletter. It covers how we’re planning to invest in the future of the network through a customised price-quality path.
Orion’s Chief Executive Nigel Barbour discusses the challenges and opportunities we face. He explains why applying for a customised price-quality path – or CPP – is essential to investing more in our network.
