The Current State of Battery Electricity Plans
I signed up to AGL's battery rewards plan in March this year and for me in NSW Ausgrid the rates when I signed up were:
Peak: 54.53c/kwh (3-9pm everyday)
Off peak: 19.998c/kwh (all other times)
Daily Supply: 130.69c/day
Peak Feed in: 29c/kwh (5-9pm)
Off Peak Feed in: 4c/kwh (all other times)
Plus a $1000 sign up credit paid after 365 days (I got $1000 because I have a sigenergy battery, the offer for other batteries was $800)
When I signed up I globird zerohero was actually a lot better than AGL's rates due to offering an effective 28c daily supply charge with the $1 daily credit, free electricity between 11am - 2pm and a 6c/kwh feed in from 4-6pm, and a 15c/kwh feed in from 6-8pm (I didn't sign up to it because I thought you needed to join a VPP to get those rates).
Flow power was also very close to AGL at the time with it's 45c/kwh feed in tariff, reasonable $1.35 daily supply charge and not ridiculous 33c/kwh base electricity rate.
When the inevitable July rate change came my new rates were:
Peak: 54.53c/kwh ---------------- 54.18c/kwh (-0.35c/kwh)
Off Peak: 19.998c/kwh ----------- 21.63c/kwh (+1.63c/kwh)
Daily Supply: 130.69c/day ------- 140.99c/day (+10.3c/day)
Also that the new peak rate doesn't apply at all in 4 months of the year.
And no change on the feed in tarrif (except that they used to pay it as gift cards and now they pay it as an actual feed in tarrif)!
It seemed that all battery plans got worse but AGL's only got a tiny bit worse, globirds got quite worse and flow powers got insanely worse:
- Globird increased supply charge by 53c, reduced peak feed in by 5c (and 4-6pm feed in by 4c) and jacked up usage rates outside the free period
- Flow power increased supply charge by $1, reduced feed in by 10c and made it capped to 15kwh and increased base rate by around 8c/kwh
I have seen the general sentiment in this subreddit is to switch away from flow power after their ridiculous increases and to AGL's battery rewards plan as it offers significantly better value.
But I saw another comment about this and it really made me think: is AGL offering a great deal now so that they scoop up all of the battery customers, dry up the competition and than crazily jack up their prices when the competition is gone? Because AGL has a much greater capacity to absorb low profits/losses now compared to smaller retailers like flow power and globird.
It makes a lot of sense to me because we all know AGL won't offer a great deal out of the goodness of their hearts and also considering their old aggressive promotion of offering a $800/$1000 sign up credit if you stay for a year (and you need to stay for another year to use up the credit).
I really want to hear you guy's thoughts on this and also if anyone signed up to globird zero hero before July 1, what are you rates now? Because I'm curious if AGL being really nice right now is also part of their stategy to scoop up and keep customers because AGL is giving us a 17c/day lower supply charge a 1c/kwh higher peak and off peak feed in comapred to new customers.