Loyalty is the most expensive thing on your bill.
Energy retailers run a classic loyalty tax: the headline discounts you signed up on quietly expire 12 months in, and your rate drifts back to the regulated default. The Australian Energy Regulator confirms it — most households on a default plan can save $300–$900/year by switching to a market offer better matched to their usage.
NGS exists to do the boring annual benchmark for you. We pull your last bill, model it against every retailer authorised in your postcode (not just the ones on a commission panel), and either switch you to the genuine best fit — or tell you to stay put, because nothing better exists this quarter. Either way, we never sit between you and your supply.
The variables that actually move your bill.
- Usage rate (peak)
- c/kWh during your retailer's peak window — biggest lever for non-solar homes
- Usage rate (off-peak / shoulder)
- Matters most if you run EV charging, pool pumps, or heat-pump hot water overnight
- Daily supply charge
- Fixed c/day — high-supply plans favour heavy users, low-supply favours light/holiday households
- Solar feed-in tariff (FiT)
- 3c–12c/kWh depending on retailer. Pairing matters: high FiT often comes with high usage rate
- Controlled-load rate
- Separate cheap rate for legacy electric hot water on a dedicated circuit
- Conditional discounts
- Direct debit, paperless billing, on-time payment — modelled at face value, not headline
- Contract terms
- Variable rate vs fixed, exit fees, lock-in periods, FiT change clauses
- Gas (if dual-fuel)
- NSW, VIC, ACT, SA and parts of QLD: separate retail competition on the gas side
- Retailer reliability
- Compared against Energy Made Easy reference price + Productreview signals — we won't route you to a retailer with a billing-error reputation
Where most comparison tools get it wrong.
Feed-in tariffs are the most misunderstood number on an Australian power bill. A "12c FiT!" headline plan often hides a 38c usage rate, which costs a heavily-self-consuming solar home more than a plain 6c FiT plan with a 28c usage rate. The maths only works if you model your actual export vs import ratio, not the bumper sticker.
If you've already got rooftop solar with us — or pull your export data from your inverter — we run the dollar maths on every solar-friendly plan in your postcode and surface the highest-saving combo. Most solar homes save $400–$800/year beyond what a generic comparison would find.