29 July 2012

Best electricity deal in ACT?

29 July 2012 | By Pedrose

So One Big Switch have organised a 17% discount for ACT residents who switch to Truenergy. The deal is 3% off the bill then another 14% off when you pay on time. I rang ActewAGL to see if then would do a better deal for me and was told they only discounts they can offer are with bundling. Then I tried to compare the rates of the two companies. From what I can work out, I am actually better off staying with ActewAGL, primarily due to their off-peak saver rate. Can anyone make sense of this please?

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Pedrose1:28 pm 31 Jul 12

Shirty, it certainly did my head in too. Vauxhall, I will check out that link but won’t hold my breath for a better deal. Reprobate, thanks for that and I will certainly try and make sure we are on the right plan. It’s a shame customer service did not talk plans with me when I called. On a good note, I got my water bill today and we shaved off $100 this quarter after installing a water saving shower head (and not watering garden).

vauxhall10:48 pm 30 Jul 12

Go to this site to find the best offer for you. Started up at the beginning of the month http://www.energymadeeasy.gov.au

shirty_bear10:44 am 30 Jul 12

My experience was much the same; we got offered a hot work-sponsored deal for one of the re-sellers (also TRUenergy, iirc) which offered similar malarkey – small up-front discount and a bigger discount for paying on time.

I crunched the numbers and found ACTEW was still slightly cheaper. Did my head in.

f4te10:23 am 30 Jul 12

Also for those with solar panels, you’re probably stuck with ActewAGL for the next 20 years anyway to keep your feed-in tariff.

Reprobate8:17 pm 29 Jul 12

I previously posted the below in Feb 11, still applies AFAIK. Current link to post July 2012 ACTEW pricing at the end. Hope this helps!

It wasn’t until I started looking into PV solar for my home that I found out there are 5 different standard electricity plans available in the ACT (funny that ActewAGL doesn’t mention their availability in quarterly bills nor promote them in their otherwise wall-to-wall local advertising…)

I have changed from the Always At Home 1 default plan 1 to Always At Home Saver plan 2, by my calcs it will be a saving of about $30 a quarter straight off the bat. This plan is available to anyone in the ACT. There are 2 other plans available which may be of use to very high users (ie all electric heating etc) and 1 time-of-use plan for those with smart meters.

When I rang to change over, before I said which plan I wanted to go to (based on my rough calculations) the consultant ran a check on my last 4 quarterly bills to see what would be the best plan – she also found Saver plan 2 offered the most savings. As always, YMMV.

For anyone else interested, here is the link:
http://www.actewagl.com.au/Product-and-services/Offers-and-prices/Prices/Residential/ACT/Electricity-prices.aspx#Always2

wildturkeycanoe8:14 pm 29 Jul 12

I did a comparison with “another electricity provider” outside the ACT once before, and even though they promised a great deal it actually worked out to be exactly the same as ACTEW, to the cent. I don’t know if that is price fixing or not, but I have never bothered to look again after that, especially considering the providers over the border are supplying power at way more than us at the moment on a $ per kWh basis.

jayskette6:34 pm 29 Jul 12

I can’t explain it – I once tried comparing our usual usage with our current ActewAGL plan to the leading companies of each state and ActewAGL still wins hands down. ACT doesn’t really have much competition but the prices are not drastically expensive either.