This past June has been the warmest on record, driving down demand for electricity as wholesale prices fall.Contact Energy's June operating report says New Zealand's electricity demand was down 0.04 percent on June 2025. In contrast, demand was up 1.1 percent in June 2024 over 2023.Weather appeared to play a big part as the 10.6C nationwide average temperature for June 2026 was 1.9C above the 1991-2020 June average.At the same time, Electricity Retailers and Generators Association said wholesale prices were sitting at some of their lowest winter levels in more than a decade."We are definitely starting to see the downward trend ourselves," Major Electricity Users' Group (MEUG) executive director Karen Boyes said, adding the milder winter was helping to bring down prices, though many of its members were locked into long-term contracts."It's a positive direction, but it's hard because a lot of these businesses do long-term contracts, so there is not many of the membership currently coming off," she said."But there are some who are starting to look. So we are steadily hoping to see some positive stories, like being mentioned - 30 percent drops. We'd love to see that."While weather was playing its part, Boyes said July and August were the coldest winter months."We've also got really great lake levels, so things are looking positive. The weather conditions are working in our favour at present."Boyes said she was hoping prices continued the downward trend, as the industry was yet to fully recover from 2024's peak prices."So we're still getting back down towards where the average was over the last 15 years."We've also seen some of MBIE's (Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's) industrial data, which shows that prices have dropped between 2025 and 2026. So there's definitely some positive signals there."Still, she said the industry was concerned about other power charges."Even though we're seeing wholesale prices drop, (members) are still seeing increases in transmission and distribution, which might slightly mute it when those two charges are going up, while wholesale should be slowing down."