ENA chief executive Alan Jenkins had slammed an earlier version from the commission, which would have required all power distributors to make cumulative annual 5% price reductions for four years regardless of how well or poorly they managed their businesses.

Today he told EnergyReview.Net that the commission's second draft - which was released late last week, was "a much more moderate and reasonable package."

The ENA hoped this second document would allow the commission and the lines industry to go through the previously impossible impasse and work together on a sustainable regime for the good of all concerned.

Steven Boulton, head of this country's second largest electricity reticulator, Powerco, late last year lambasted government plans to regulate the power distributors, warning that New Zealand was sliding down the same slippery path of over-regulation as was Australia.

New Zealand had the lowest delivered electricity price in the developed world, partly because it did not have a heavy-handed regulatory regime. Any more regulatory control would mean price hikes for consumers in the future, Boulton said.

Though wholesale and retail power prices had generally been increasing since the 2001 dry winter power crisis, most lines company charges had been not increased in real terms

In its latest report the government-owned commission says the level for any price path threshold would range from 1-5%, but with three different levels (say 1, 3 and 5%) to apply to different groups of electricity lines businesses.

Lines companies that had been performing relatively poorly would face a higher required price reduction to avoid breaching the threshold. Better performing businesses would face a lower price reduction but still be required to make efficiency improvements each year to avoid breaching the threshold.

The ENA and other interested parties have until the end of this month to make submissions, with the Commission holding a conference between March 10-14, before setting price control thresholds, which will apply from April 2003 to March 2008.