Electricity Bill

DFD
Switched-on
1 Reply 1555 Views

Dear AGL

I am not happy at all with the bills, it is too much, I can not afford this anymore, I have installed a 15kw solar panels and my bills was just acceptable, now my bills over $400.00 every month and just received a bill for $502, we are 4 people at the house and we are out of the house most of the time.

October was $205.98

November was $336.60

December was $$442.26

Jan is $502.13

something is not right with AGL

 

this is not right, I have to start looking for another suppliers

1 REPLY 1
Lester
Powerhouse
0 Replies 1550 Views

@DFD 

"4 people at the house and we are out of the house most of the time"

 

This could be most of your problem, depending on where you are and your plan / tariffs.

Usually peak charges are early morning before people go to work, and after dusk when people come home from work.

You don't say when people are home mostly, but if you aren't using your solar / using it for power when the sun's shining, it will (ok, MIGHT be depending on that location / tariff rates thing) probably be a usually pathetic feed in rate, while paying a very high tariff rate when you are using power.

 

15kw of solar, you should be killing it if it's all set up right and working ok.

Certainly with a battery you should never have to pay a thing, unless using so much per day you really are creating that usage.

 

Have you gone over the home energy use a little to work out where you can save ?

Or at least know what you use and on what / when ?

 

Solar and choosing a plan is very difficult from many aspects, and what works for one might not for another, regions etc, but even the way they use power, even if virtually next door to each other.

 

We pay quarterly, and are yet to get a full term bill since going solar, but the signs are good for us, using most power during the day, semi retired, working from home.

 

My expected bill of min $1000 or so for a quarter should be between $0 and $300, I'll know come 3rd week of April first full bill.

Also watching it on the AGL app from time to time.

 

We have 11.23kw of optimised solar, on mostly sunny days producing between 65 and 70 kw.

We are nearing 2 months now and my app says we've made a total of 3mwh, or a little over 50kw a day, so we've had some average days in there too with cloudy / rainy days that we've had a surprising amount of through the start to summer.

 

My rates with AGL went up around 45% when the big power increase happened across retailers some months ago now (it was supposed to be about 25% hmmppf), and there's been more minor increases in there too.

Why we made the solar leap.

 

I looked at all options during my solar research, and compared solar plans from various retail suppliers, and found a virtually non competitive market (here in SA)   😕

So we stuck with AGL as we've been with them for 40 years or so.

 

Before making a decision about changing, look carefully at the solar you have, what it's producing, look at GOVCO 'energy made easy' (< google it) site to put in your info and compare plans available with various retailers etc.

 

In todays market, feed in should be considered a bonus only, a sweetener . . . in the main the savings from solar must be during the day when producing (unless you get a battery to spread the love !).

Your solar retailer SHOULD have told you that, not just chased a sale.

 

Good luck with your search for lower power costs.