2026 Energy Awards winners
21 Aug 2026Contact Energy was the big winner at the Energy Excellence Awards, taking four of the 10 categories. The gentailer - which last week reported a record full-year earnings result - was named electricity retailer of the year at last night's awards ceremony in Wellington. Its Glenbrook 100-megawatt battery project earned Contact the energy project of the year title, and its efforts to tackle the sector-wide skills shortage saw it take the FutureForce award as well.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Contact Energy – The Flex Factor: Glenbrook Ohurua Battery 1
19 Aug 2026Contact Energy's first grid-scale battery began trading on 1 April, less than two years after construction started in July 2024. The first stage of the Glenbrook Ohurua Battery can deliver 100 megawatts of power and store around 200 megawatt-hours of electricity, providing enough energy to supply the equivalent of 44,000 homes for up to two hours. Contact says the $153 million project at New Zealand Steel's Glenbrook site was delivered on time and under budget.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Alliance Group and Active Refrigeration – Alliance high temperature heat pump projects
19 Aug 2026Alliance Group and Active Refrigeration have installed more than 11 megawatts of high-temperature heat pump capacity across three meat processing plants, reducing emissions by about 25,000 tonnes of carbon equivalent a year. Completed between 2021 and 2025, the programme replaced much of the process heat previously supplied by ageing coal-fired boilers at Pukeuri, Lorneville and Mataura. The installations use low-grade waste heat from existing ammonia refrigeration systems and water-sourced heat pumps to supply hot water at up to 80 degrees Celsius for processing.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Woolworths New Zealand – Chitranjan (Chintu) Rathod - Energy Operations and Innovation Manager
18 Aug 2026Woolworths New Zealand energy operations and innovation manager Chitranjan Rathod has delivered the supermarket chain's Energy Management Centre - a flagship project projected to drive substantial, long-term annual cost savings. The analytics-driven programme uses artificial intelligence and predictive modelling to optimise refrigeration, lighting and HVAC systems across its supermarket network, and provides real-time control and visibility across major energy loads in its store network.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Contact Energy – The Good Initiative
18 Aug 2026Contact Energy helped more than 20,000 New Zealanders within seven months of launching its Good Initiative to support communities facing financial hardship. The $5 million programme, launched in September, covers the energy costs - and in some cases mobile costs - for 57 community organisations across the country, allowing the groups to redirect funding to frontline services. Contact says it takes balancing its commercial performance with social responsibility seriously, investing the profit from the 2025 financial year into building critical energy infrastructure.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Channel Infrastructure NZ – Accelerated diesel storage for New Zealand
18 Aug 2026Channel Infrastructure responded to the global fuel crisis by rapidly recommissioning two tanks at Marsden Point to increase New Zealand's diesel storage capacity. The project saw 93 million litres of additional diesel storage online at Marsden Point in just three months, increasing in-country diesel storage by about nine days of average demand and lifting storage coverage by more than 40 per cent relative to the Government's 21-day Minimum Stockholding Obligation.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Westpower | ElectroNet Group – Simon Harvey – General Manager
17 Aug 2026ElectroNet general manager Simon Harvey has overseen remarkable growth since taking charge of the contracting business in 2020, with the Westpower/ElectroNet Group firm increasing revenue, improving safety performance, creating new jobs, and expanding operations nationwide. The group says revenue increased from $45 million to $125 million in the four years to 2026, while reducing workplace injury rates and expanding its workforce.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Fonterra Co-operative – Project Kowhai – Small footprint with a big impact
17 Aug 2026Fonterra achieved coal-free manufacturing in the North Island through Project Kowhai, which installed resistive element boilers at its Waitoa facility. The nation's largest dairy co-operative installed two 4-megawatt boilers to provide the renewable process heat capacity needed to switch off the site's last coal boiler. The project is forecast to reduce emissions by 9200 tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent a year, eliminate the need for diesel boilers and establish a scalable pathway for future decarbonisation.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Contact Energy and Syos Aerospace – Underwater Robotic Coating Measurement and Inspection System
14 Aug 2026Syos Aerospace and Contact Energy have delivered a world-first underwater robotic inspection system that is changing how hydroelectric penstocks are assessed and maintained. The project enables precision coating measurement and visual inspection inside fully flooded steel penstocks, removing the need to drain the assets or send personnel into confined, steeply sloped tunnels. The system was developed to solve a long-standing inspection challenge in hydroelectric generation.
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AWARDS FINALIST: Transpower and Engineering NZ – Wonder project: Power challenge – Powering up our future workforce
13 Aug 2026Transpower and Engineering New Zealand's Wonder Project: Power Challenge reached more than 11,000 students this year - double the number last year - as part of their push to ensure the workforce needed to build, maintain and operate the "grid of the future". The free hands-on classroom programme introduces Year 7 and 8 students to electricity generation, transmission and renewable energy concepts.
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