But the bills themselves — whether received traditionally by paper or electronically — can contain some hidden savings for those who understand them.
Buyologists founder Mike Chalmers said many people didn’t check their power bills for a variety of reasons.
“Some people don’t understand them, some people don’t care, and some people don’t think they can change them anyway,” he said.
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“But you do have options — maybe with your existing supplier or potentially a new supplier.”
Step one is to know the rate you pay for energy usage — which is typically between 25c/kWh and 44c/kWh depending on where you live. Mr Chalmers suggested visiting www.energymadeeasy.gov.au for independent price comparisons.
Check all costs, not just usage charges, because extra expenses can include payment processing fees, credit card processing fees, late payment fees, and paper statement fees.
He suggested checking for retailer errors by comparing your usage with previous bills. “I found a $15,000 error in one of my client’s bills where they had been incorrectly billed for years.”
Big savings can come from harnessing pay-on-time discounts offered by many providers.
EZswitch CEO Philip Oakman said these discounts could range between 5 per cent and 42 per cent off your bill.
“A recent ACCC report criticised heavily the conditional discounts offered by retailers, especially pay-on-time discounts. The same report revealed that 27 per cent of residential bill payers miss the payment deadline,” he said.
“If you are on an energy plan with a 30-40 per cent discount that’s a huge difference to your bill if you don’t pay by the due date.”
Mr Oakman said electricity bills had two different charges — for energy use and a daily supply charge.
“The latter is straightforward. You are charged a fixed rate every day for access to the electricity,” he said. It’s the usage charges where things start to get complex.”
Some bills have a single rate, while some are charged by time of use with up to three separate usage rates — peak, off-peak and shoulder.
If you know these rates you can structure your energy use of appliances around the cheapest times of the day.
People with solar panels get some money back through their solar feed-in tariff, which can range from 6c to 60c depending on their state and when their system was installed.
“Any solar power produced by solar panels is first used by the household. Excess electricity generated by the solar panels is exported to the electricity grid,” Mr Oakman said.
DON’T GET PEAKY OVER POWER
Timing your energy use can save money if your electricity provider offers different usage rates.
• PEAK is usually between 3pm and 9pm and is the most expensive rate.
• OFF-PEAK is typically between 11pm and 7am.
• SHOULDER is the periods between peak and off-peak.
Originally published as How your power bill can save you money.
