The annual electricity game

It seems kind of painful, but kind of good?, the way the electricity companies are set up to compete now.  Well, at least if you're online and alert to the issue.  I can imagine it's not great for the older, not so online, home customer.  

So, I changed electricity supplier for home perhaps only 15 months ago, when the rate of the previous company took a leap upwards.   I can't remember if there was a one off bonus credit to do so then, but probably.   The new supplier was Origin Energy.

Then a couple of weeks ago, when looking at my most recent bills, I thought the rise in Origin's daily connection charge seemed exorbitant, and used an online comparison service which came up with a much lower daily connection charge and lower consumption charge too.  And a $150 credit for swapping over.  So I went with it.

But as each new contract comes with a 10 business day cooling off period, this has led to Origin ringing me and undercutting the new supplier to get me back.   They offer a $200 discount, and lower connection charges and consumption charges than the new company.   All in place until next July, when (I predict), I will almost certainly face a substantial increase and need to go through this exercise again.   

My most recent quarterly electricity bills, for future reference, were $702 (this covered Nov - Jan, so summer and perhaps our peak use of airconditioning), $604 and $564 (the last being May to July.)   There are three adults in the household, and so plenty of use of the washing machine, dishwasher and my wife is not shy about turning the airconditioner on, either.   We do use bottle gas for the stovetop, but one 9 ltr bottle costs around $30 and seems to last at least two months - possibly more?    I no longer have solar hot water, and had to replace it earlier this year with a heat pump system.   I've been slack and never got solar panels on the roof.

I guess this works out at about $50 per week in a household of 3.  I don't know, but that doesn't seem too bad for me, even though of course I will take the lower rate with pleasure.  I do wonder, though, about online whiners who claim some huge electricity bills and how they manage to get them so high.   

I also note that the single aged pension rate in Australia is now $600 per week, soon to increase to $618.  So, for them, maybe 50/600 x 100 = 8% of the pension goes to power bills?    (Actually, some survey stuff online suggests its more like 5%, but then, some places use a lot more gas than we do.)   Again, while pensioners aren't going to be flying business class anywhere, I don't think electricity bill will be forcing them to eat dog food.  (This always was my favourite trope when inflation gets higher - some current affairs program would have a pensioner claiming he can only afford a yummy can of dog food.)   

Anyway, I must remember to come back here to check the comparison under their new discounted offer.