How to understand electricity retailer offers

The game you're playing

Electricity retailing in Australia is a switching game: retailers profit most from customers who signed up years ago and never looked again. Plans are deliberately structured to resist comparison - different discount bases, conditional rates, sign-up credits that expire, and rates that quietly drift upward after the first year. Reading an offer properly is a fifteen-minute skill that routinely saves hundreds of dollars annually.

The good news: regulation has forced a common yardstick, and free tools do the arithmetic. You just need to know what to look at.

The reference price: your universal ruler

Every market offer in NSW must state its price as a percentage against the government-set reference price for your network area and usage type. This is the single most useful number on any offer: '15% below the reference price' can be compared directly against every other plan, regardless of how each structures its rates.

Ignore headline 'discounts' unless you know the base - a 25% discount off an inflated base can cost more than no discount off honest rates. The reference-price comparison cuts through exactly this trick.

The four numbers under the marketing

Usage rate(s) in c/kWh - flat, or time-of-use peak/shoulder/off-peak. Daily supply charge - the fixed cost you pay regardless of usage, which matters more the less you consume (especially post-solar). Feed-in tariff if you have solar - and beware plans pairing a headline feed-in rate with padded usage rates. Conditions - pay-on-time discounts (a penalty in disguise), direct-debit requirements, exit fees, and benefit periods after which the plan quietly reverts to worse rates.

Also check the fine print for demand charges creeping into some residential plans, and whether rates are fixed for a period or variable at the retailer's discretion.

Use the comparison engines - both kinds

Energy Made Easy (energymadeeasy.gov.au) is the federal government's free comparison site: every generally available plan, no commissions, no retailer sponsorship. Enter your usage - or upload it - and it ranks plans against your actual consumption. This should be your baseline check at least annually; it's the neutral referee.

WattEver (wattever.com.au) is an independent comparison site that many solar owners prefer because it handles solar-specific comparison well - feed-in tariffs, time-of-use structures and battery-relevant plans - across a wide market. Using both takes twenty minutes and triangulates the answer: the government site for completeness and neutrality, WattEver for solar-aware ranking.

Avoid comparing solely on commercial 'switch and save' sites that earn commissions from featured retailers - their 'best' plan is sometimes their best-paying plan.

When to re-shop

Annually at minimum, and always after anything changes your usage shape: installing solar (your old plan was chosen for a customer who no longer exists), adding a battery or EV, or receiving a rate-change notice. Our companion article covers the solar-specific plan logic in depth - and checking your plan after commissioning is part of how we set customers up.