Do you live in regional Queensland?  Do you think your only choice of electricity retailer is Ergon Energy? Then I have exciting news for you.  You can choose who bills you for electricity. [Read more…]

Finally, it’s official – DNSPs must offer a standard tariff to Victorian solar owners.

I have just read the Australian Energy Regulator’s FINAL DECISION Statement on Victorian Energy Distribution for 2021-2026.  According to the document, Victorian electricity distributors will be required to: [Read more…]

Thousands of Texans caught in a deadly, polar vortex blizzard have been charged thousands of dollars for electricity over just a few days. They were exposed to wholesale electricity prices that hit their maximum price of over $11 Australian per kilowatt-hour. [Read more…]

To understand why solar feed-in tariffs are comparatively low, you need to understand how your electricity bill sausage is made. Image credit

In this article, I am going to take a typical electricity bill and break it down into its components. 

I told Finn I was doing this for two sensible reasons:

1. To let people know where their electricity dollar goes.
2. To show where solar feed-in tariffs come from and why they are significantly less than electricity’s retail price.

But the main reason is I hate electricity bills and enjoy breaking them into pieces. [Read more…]

Click Energy provides high feed-in tariffs — If your inverter is 5kW or less.

If you:

• want a high solar feed-in tariff.
• have a solar inverter 5 kilowatts or less.
• have low grid electricity consumption 

…then Click Energy may be the best choice of electricity retailer to minimize your electricity bills (or maximize credit received). [Read more…]

Late last month Tesla, in partnership with electricity retailer Octopus Energy, announced a new Virtual Power Plant (VPP) in the UK. Interestingly, Tesla’s UK VPP is a much simpler proposition than Tesla’s Australian VPP. [Read more…]

Update July 30th 2022: The 3 cent DEBs feed-in tariff was reduced to 2.5 cents on July 1st 2022.  The 10 cent rate from 3 pm to 9 pm remains the same.

From yesterday (31 August 2020), new residential solar power systems installed in Western Australia will no longer receive the REBS or ‘Renewable Energy Buyback Scheme’ solar feed-in tariff of 7.135 cents per kilowatt-hour.  Instead, it will receive the DEBS or ‘Distributed Energy Buyback Scheme’ that will instead pay: [Read more…]

COVID-19 has contributed to wholesale electricity prices cuts, which should be reflected in your power bills from July.

The coronavirus has killed more than 340,000 people worldwide and taken a big bite out of economic activity.  Fortunately, Australia’s death toll has been low thanks to the effective response from medical professionals.

While we’ve gotten off lightly with regard to lives lost, there has been a sizable economic downturn.  This has caused wholesale electricity prices to drop, which you should see reflected your bills from July.  Unless you’re in Western Australia. [Read more…]

The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) Energy Council has issued a consultation paper designed to inform the NEM’s transition to a two-sided market. [Read more…]

If you expect your energy retailer to send you any money they owe you without you asking for it, you may be disappointed.

A reader’s email last week led me down too many rabbit holes, but I think it was worth it. The reader asked us to look into how electricity companies handle refunds of customer credits accumulated under solar feed-in tariffs (FiTs). Can customers get credit refunds automatically, and what happens to credits at the end of a contract? [Read more…]