Choosing the right time to run appliances can cut power bills for customers able to ''pick a price'', advocates say.
Smart meters give Flick Electric Co customers access to the wholesale price of electricity, direct from the spot market.
Power bills separately identify the cost of generation, distribution, transmission and metering costs and the percentage charged by the retailer.
As the price of wholesale electricity goes up and down, so does that part of the bill.
The price can change every half-hour, depending on how windy it is, how cold it is and the water levels in lakes.
Flick has 3000 customers nationwide after launching in Hamilton and Wellington last year.
Chief executive Steve O'Connor said Flick allowed people to ''pick a price'' when they consumed electricity.
Prices could be cheaper in the middle of the night, so starting the dishwasher before bedtime could reduce the power bill, he said.
The ''big five'' electricity companies had dominated the market with a traditional retail model.
''No-one has found a smart way to work around that model and what we have is quite disruptive. We don't have any issues of coming to market with an offer to try and beat them at their own game.
"We have simply gone and got access to all the wholesale prices and brought them down to customers.''
Greg Sise became the first Flick residential customer in Dunedin when he switched his family home to the retailer in mid-May.
Mr Sise said he had no fear switching to a retailer that exposed him to the spot price electricity market.
''It doesn't scare me being on a pricing plan with spot prices ... The nice thing about being on spot prices, when the prices are high and the supply is contracted, then you are getting that signal directly and you know when your efforts to reduce electricity consumption are going to have the greatest national benefit.''
Since he switched to Flick, the lake levels had been high and the spot prices had been low, so he had not changed his daily electricity consumption habits, yet.
''If we have a very dry period and spot prices went high for weeks or months, we might look at doing something different then to minimise our electricity use.''
