How to Read Your Electricity Bill: Supply Charge, Tariffs and Credits

Most people open their power bill, look at the title in the corner, and go, “Bloody hell, that’s expensive.” And then they close it and just pay it. But that big dollar number isn’t the most important part of your bill. It doesn’t tell you whether you’ve used more power, your rate went up, a credit came off, or your retailer changed the way they charge you. I’m Jason. And I’m Cam, owners of Source Energy Group.

We’ve designed and installed countless solar and battery systems for Australian homeowners. In this episode, we’re showing you how to read your electricity bill properly. the supply charge, the import tariffs, the export tariff if you have solar, the solar share offer, and the credits that can make a bill look better than it actually is. Starting with the thing that we wish everyone looked at before they even looked at the dollar amount. All right, welcome back, guys.

Back here another episode with Cam. We got Luke and Tim with us today also. And today we’re going to got an episode about I wish everyone knew this about their electricity bill. We’re just going to break it all down and run through the main components. Yep.

Once you understand your electricity bill, then maybe you might understand the benefits of solar and battery. And battery big one now. So used to just saying solar. But solar and battery. Yeah.

First one which we can all win about. We have ton of times and it’s the one thing we can’t kill. Supply charge. That’s him. Yep.

Probably the most things you see online when people comment on something. Oh, but you can never get rid of the supply charge. 100%. And a lot of companies will will go out there and they’ll try and sell customers on the fact that they’ll get a zero bill, but you can’t essentially deplete it. There’s there’s ways you can get around it and try and get it as close to zero as possible, but can’t really get rid of it.

You get your grid usage down as low as possible, can’t you? Almost down to zero, but pretty low, but that’s your grid usage, which means the bill there’s still something left behind. And that is the supply charge. Wonder what percentage of customers have been promised a zero bill and have not got a zero bill. Yeah, you got that statistic, Cal.

I I reckon that would be pretty Yeah. Bring it up for us, Cal. It’ll be pretty close to about, you know, the the numbers with people buying lotto tickets and winning. Yeah. Oh, Yeah.

Yep. Yeah. Or the fake ones. You got what? 17,000 reviews.

So, yeah, we’re only 14,000. So, keep up. Yeah. Um, yeah. daily.

What is the supply charge? And for, you know, we joke about it, we know what it means. And you know, reality is there could be people that still don’t actually understand what it is. Supply charge. What’s the payment pretty much for them to supply the property with the meter?

Well, have we, you know, kilowatt hours measured by their digital meter without them having to get a site these days, which I think’s even worse considering back in the day, they used to come out and actually read the meters and got paid for that and it was a lot less. Yeah. Um, now the price has gone up and you’re still That’s digital and Wi-Fi. Essentially, their connection to the grid, isn’t it? So, they can get power to the house.

the name to be installed on site supplying the power. Yeah. Connection to the house. Might be a bit further behind that. Like, you know, a bunch of the Ergon fellows up north and you probably know a bunch of level twos and whatnot down south, but um you still got the people working on the lines in the background, working on the substations and all that trying to keep everything running.

True. Yeah. Balance the phases. Yeah. Yeah.

Um but yeah or just rip off the poor farmers on the SWER lines. Yeah. Yep. 100%. Just not too expensive to run it out there.

Um yeah, that’s the supply charge. There’s a bit behind it. Yeah. I guess it’s the cost of the infrastructure, I guess, to get the power to the house in the maintains and then all that stuff. Yeah.

Uh hence why it increases every time the wages go up, everything else goes up. Yeah. Every time solar and battery uh gets installed, supply charge goes up pretty well. Pretty well. They’re making less money.

Yeah. That’s it. Make it somewhere else. Find it for somewhere else. I guess that’s the part that we can’t Well, look, there is ways to help uh offset it, but you know, end of the day, it’s all about your usage from the grid, isn’t it?

Yeah. What we can do. Definitely. So, apart from the supply charge, there is depending on what your bill is, you got your time of use, you got general usage, don’t you? Yes.

Uh, your time of use come in what are the different times of use? We got your peak hours usually between 4:00 and 9 at night and I think Ergon 7 7 till 9:00 in the morning from memory off the top of your head. Yeah. Your shoulder and your off peak. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. Then you got your off peak for tariff 31 which usually runs runs during the night for your um hot water or your pools or your aircons in that matter. So it’s a cheaper rate for the runs out usage. Peak’s just another word for that’s when we charge you the most, isn’t it?

Yeah. Yeah. Or off peak, should I say? tariff 31. Yeah.

But you do away with all that if you get a battery. So y is it better off removing the off peak? It’s like North Queensland’s a big one, especially for an air con. 100% it is. And every single up there is if you want your air con or your hot water or your pool for that matter to run off your solar battery, you have to anyway.

You have to put it back on tariff 11. So yeah, can’t have solar obviously running down the meter. Yeah. tariff 33. Um, Ergon don’t like that.

And so, yeah. Uh, yeah, I’ve recently looked at a customer’s bill and he had the the peak shoulder in the off peak. I firmly believe this is a a good way they they can pinch more buck out of your pocket. Yep. So, he still had quite a high supply charge around $151.

Um, I think between peak shoulder and off peak it was like uh 50 something cents then dropped down to about uh 41 cents and then down to 37 cents. M you combine all that. Oh, sorry, it’s 34 cents. Um, but that’s a big range. Like if you combine all that into one and you see some people paying between 34 and 40 cents just as one hole across the board rather than that massively in fact if you average that price out.

Yeah. Where the most of the usage is, he’s paying 90% of his cost in the most heaviest point. Yeah. Yep. It keeps it a bit simple for the customer.

I think people used to just get all these different rates and like you know obviously we know from experience when people are giving us our bills to kind of assess and I even look at some of these bills and I’m like I reckon people just get the shits and they go why am I paying so much? Oh stuff it I’m just going to pay it anyway like whatever I have to pay it like it’s confusing. Yeah, they try and make things more confusing so you do just get to that. Well, I reckon they do anyway, but I’m pretty one minded thinking on power company. So, yeah.

But your power bill, it’s almost like a tax. Power is almost like a tax, isn’t it? You just got to got to live with you just got to pay it. Unless you got a solution. Yeah.

What was that? Still thinking about the government. So, still off it. So, what we got? We got the supply charge, you get your time of use.

There is the general use. So what’s the difference between general use and time of use? So your general use is well I believe just your general usage charge for all time of the day. And then your peak, off peak and shoulder usage is for peak time which I don’t know the exact times. I think varies per everyone’s breakfast and dinner.

Yeah. General use is generally just a flat rate without all those different times. Yeah, 100% just for the rest of the day pretty well. Yeah. Um, so if someone does have solar though, not necessarily battery, but if they got solar on the roof, they can also get their export tariffs, can’t they?

Yeah. This is another thing like I guess the supply charge a lot of people get upset about cuz it’s just going up and up and up. Anyone that’s had solar over the last what 15 years or whatever, they used to get a good feed and tariff and now it’s a another topic of conversation. Those days are gone. Yeah.

So again, it’s just it’s another way that they measure. So if you got the solar and it’s going to the grid, they’re measuring in the kilowatt hours and then they will pay you these days peanuts for it. Yep. 34 I think still pay 6 cent. So stuff all compared to the 35 45 up.

Wow. Of Queensland. Let’s go. Call it bling. No idea.

No, that’s why everyone’s got cruisers up there. You want to move up there now? Give us a jumper. We’ll call it even. We’re good.

No deal. Yeah. Well, down here there’s three cents, but that’s another thing. The export tariffs are coming down and down and down, but the supply charge going up and up and up. Yeah, that’s it.

They’re just swapping one for the other. Yeah. About, you know, they have been very kind. Well, I don’t think they’ve done it on intention, but they’ve been told to do it from their AER. Um, that’s what the 3 hours of free power is that coming the 1st of July.

It was actually what our first episode was about, wasn’t it? I think it’s it’s mainly for that and also to keep the grid at normal cuz at the end of the day all these people pumping solar back in at that time of day cuz that’s obviously a perfect sunny hours. They need to get rid of this there’s all this extra power just sitting there doing nothing now. So the whole idea of people to use it and buy batteries and store it so then later at night in their peak hours their grid isn’t getting slammed as much I guess you could say. Yeah.

But it’s kind of like um in the solar industry and the CEC there is the rules around marketing and sales and everything like that. You can only say and do certain things. But then now the AER telling the electrical providers, power providers that they have to give away um 3 hours for free when it’s not because they just pay for it in the peak. Yeah. Up down the track.

Yeah. Well, they on top of giving that solar share offer, they also uh adv or allowed them to put their prices up 1 to 4%. Yeah. Yeah. It’s take from put together.

Yeah. Nothing’s free. It’s the exact reason why the supply charge has gone up 20 30 cents in most um providers. Robbing Peter to pay Paul pretty much. Well, yeah.

On the solar share offer again like the VPPs do the sort of the same setup. You can’t get it Ergon territory. Can you get it down south at the moment? The VPPs? Yeah, there’s there’s a couple of different ones.

I haven’t set anyone up with them. I know there’s Amber. Um GlowBird. GlowBird. Uh there’s another one.

Uh Local Volts. Yeah. Yep. Another one. Cuz they set up the same same essential kind of thing as the solar share offer.

It’s similar except you stay with your energy provider. I guess some of them just do a bit better of a feed in, but same thing. Take one end given the other. Yeah. Oh, look.

I mean, yeah, it’s a great benefit. Yeah. To the naked eye, like, oh, yeah, cool. Three three hours of free power, but what can we do to utilize what can we do to utilize that? Territory is capped at 25 kW as well in those 3 hours.

So, you got 3 hours of free power, but if you hit the 25 kW charge, then you start or or buy back. Yeah. Then free. Yeah. The fine print.

Yes. Yeah. So, and that’s the biggest thing I’ve mentioned to anyone who actually wants to look into that solar share offer is just get your energy provider to send you like a what you’re paying now and then what you will be paying when they put you on it. Yep. Cuz same thing, they weren’t very uh local.

We’re very open for coming about that. Comparison if that 3 hours of free power is actually going to give you a benefit or if you’re best off staying on the general use. Yum. Which outcome is best for your household? Exactly.

Yeah. Um, I mean the solar share offer that’s showing up on some bills now cuz it’s obviously just come in. I guess this here it’s more about what do you see on the bills in general. Some bills that come through, people think that they’re not actually using much because they think they got a small bill. Y where in their actual they got quite a high usage and this is more common in in elderly pensioners where there’s a lot of um subsidies get thrown out there oneoff subsidies and so on and all of a sudden they go oh my bill was only like $100 one month and next next month it’s down the bottom they’ve had another 150 taken off by the government per month they were doing for a while there.

And so I guess when it comes to sizing of a system, if these subsidies aren’t taken into account and it’s just gone off a dollar value or dollar figure, this is another way people end up with undersized system on their roof, you know, tiny system cuz someone’s just gone in and tried to match the dollar figure on a power bill without actually looking at the usage and sizing it properly. Yep. But yeah, recently saw that on a customer’s bill. Exactly that. Um actually came to one one of our info night info night.

Yeah. Yeah. F and Jake. Yeah. F and Jake.

They um lovely customers and they came in with a bill that was 180 bucks but realistically that dollar price without any subsidies off it should have been in the 400s. Yeah. Right. Um so without like to the naked eye Yeah. $180 bill.

Wonderful. But then take all those government subsidies off it and it’s actually a $400 and some dollar bill. It’s massive. When you lose those subsidies, the bill price is going to jump nearly double. Over double.

So they got a system size for on their actual usage. So regardless of whether they get that subsidy or not, their bill’s still covered. Yeah, I guess in short like one thing you got to look at is obviously supply charge and this is where we start every time we look at a bill sizing up the system. We actually highlight charge to the customers to the clients and just say look this is what you’re going to be paying every quarter every month whatever their bill is even if we design a system that gets your usage down to zero or as close to zero as possible that’s the very first thing that we highlight in front of them. Y that way once we go through and design and we show how their bill reduce they’re not like shocked that there’s something left over or end of the day we can’t actually get rid of that supply charge unless they participate in say a VPP or something like that and the way we look at that that’s up to the customer if they want to do that if they do that that’s a bonus otherwise um we had Bob on here on another episode just recently he’s more than happy just to pay you supply charge Well, not more than happy, but he’s over the moon that that’s all he’s paying is like I think it’s like 2/3 or 3/4 of the supply charge.

Yeah, that’s it. 80 bucks a quarter. It’s not much. Yeah. It’s just being upfront with the customer like, you know, building that trust with them.

You know, that’s what we’re trying to achieve. Pretty much laying it down black and white. Look, you’re going to pay this regardless. Yeah. But we can design this to cover this.

It’s still going to it’s a huge benefit for you anyway. Definitely. Same old thing. If you’re paying $1,000 a quarter now, you can keep paying $1,000 a quarter and it’s going to be 1,100 next quarter and then 1,200 next year and then 1300 and everything like that. Or you can pay $100 a quarter now and it might go to 110 120 so on.

Either way, you just got that continued savings over and over again. Yeah. Regardless of that supply charge, Bob said that too and he called it out himself like in his own words even prompting him. Yeah. Right.

It was perfect. I asked him if he had some PR training before the Yep. So if you are ever looking to get solar um like get the person that’s walking you through it to look through your your peak your shoulder your off peak general use where you’re at might work for you might not work for you but you need to actually understand your bill and where it is going to work for you. Yeah. So if you’re looking at it if your bill’s keeping you up at night you’re stressing out about paying a bill or anything like that give us a call.

We’ll have someone come around or on the phone, run through your bill, help you understand the bill first. Once you understand the bill, we can design a system around your household, your usage, and then, you know, present that to you. Then it’s up to you what you do from there. Okay? Keep paying that bill or let us install a nice solar and battery system.

Simple. Luke up north, Jim down south,