Have you ever wondered if you are paying too much for your energy? Or if you are getting the best possible price? Does your head numb at the thought of calling energy retailers and being bombarded with terms like tariffs, cents per kilowatt-hour, dollar and cents per supply day? Ugh. I struggled with this many times throughout the years and ended up confused and frustrated. I would just stay with my current retailer and keep paying the higher energy bill.
I’m grateful to the one big switch campaign which introduced me to the switching for savings philosophy. I got a saving after my first switch, but what was missing for me was not knowing if the campaign’s selected retailer was the lowest for me. I have the same reservations with online commercial comparison sites. Given my engineering background and extensive spreadsheet use, I thought I could come up with a way to compare all retailers based on my unique energy circumstances.
This article provides a method to collect readily available, and current energy offers from retailers across Australia. As well as a tool in the form as a spreadsheet to check all offers specific to your circumstances. After which you may gain a better understanding of your energy bill and how all the various rates affect the amount. Annual checks will become a breeze by reusing the tool and method outlined.
If you have any questions, please post them in the comments below. Lastly, if you would just like the completed spreadsheet sent to you with all offers, and you can reuse annually head over here for further details.
Step 1 – Create an Energy Comparison Spreadsheet or Just Download It
Click here to download the energy comparison spreadsheet. If you don’t have Microsoft Excel installed on your device, just upload it to your platform of choice.
The spreadsheet layout is as follows:
- Formatted as a table
- Columns A and B were arbitrarily labelled Reference and Units respectively – these are text columns that show the areas of interest.
- All remaining columns were arbitrarily labelled 1 to 52 – The orange coloured cells need manual data input, while non-coloured cells contain calculations.
- Column 1 should always stay the control/validation column.
- Column 2 should always contain the current plan of which all offers will compare with it.
- Columns 3-52 are for the offers.
Anatomy of the spreadsheet
Input the Electricity usage and supply
Column 1 has sample data from the Australian Government’s ENERGY MADE easy How to read your electricity bill website. Starting from the Back Page in the Electricity usage and supply calculation table, the Usage (kWh) values were entered into the spreadsheet. The Electricity charges table header shows the days of service supply. [Refer to rows 6-12]
Input the Electricity Rates and any Applicable Tiers
Still on the Back Page, in the Electricity charges table, the Rate $ per kWh values were entered into the spreadsheet. [Refer to rows 14-35]
Input any Discounts
The applicable discounts from the Front Page go into the proper discount row. The spreadsheet caters for discounts on usage only (excludes solar and supply); usage and supply (excludes solar); overall (no exclusions, the desired one). [Refer to rows 37-39]
Hopefully, if all went well, the Total including discounts in the spreadsheet should match the Total amount due with the discount on the Front Page. [Refer to row 67]
ENERGY MADE easy front page bill and spreadsheet payable match
If you are building your spreadsheet from scratch, have a crack at completing the calculated cells. Refer to the referenced file for help, if required.
Redo step 1 and fill out the details in column 2 with your latest energy bill. Remember to enter Current Plan for the Offer name row. If you are new to the energy market and just looking for the lowest offer, just go to the next step.
Step 2 – Easily Compile a List of Energy Offers
Generate Energy Offers Online
Again from the ENERGY MADE easy website, navigate to the Search for energy offers page.
- Select Home
- Input your postcode
- Choose Electricity
- Select your electricity usage questions as applicable
- If you have a recent bill, select Yes and complete the Electricity bill 1 details
- Read and accept the disclaimer and click the Compare energy offers button
Filter and Sort Energy Offers Online
On the Energy offer search results page is a Filter search button at the top of the table. Clicking the button presents various filter options for Fees, Contract term, Price, Retailer and Options. Feel free to select those options applicable to you and click the Apply filters button at the bottom of the window.
Next, sort the Estimated bill with all discounts column by clicking the top triangle in the lower right corner until the lowest offer is at the top.
Energy Made easy offers table header
Perfect the top offer is the lowest estimated bill, let’s pick that one! Not so fast, it may be the lowest, but you don’t know until you crunch the numbers especially if you have solar or a controlled load. Remember on the previous page they didn’t ask for your solar generation, so they are not taking this into account in their comparison. Also, some offers lump together multiple controlled rates and the website may only calculate the lowest load rate. Hopefully, they will consider these in future updates as it’s a fantastic tool.
Step 3 – Transfer Offer Details into the Spreadsheet
There is no beating around the bush here. This step is tedious!
Methods of Gathering the Data
The best option, if you are comfortable with spreadsheets, is to download the results by clicking the Microsoft Excel icon located above the offers table on the right side.
Another option and quite elegant is to use the Compare offers button feature on the website. Compare three at a time for over 50+ offers – your nuts! OK maybe not so elegant but it will work.
Start the Data Entry
Now comes the painstaking task of transferring the details from each selected offer into a separate column of the spreadsheet as outlined in step 1.
Remember for the usage section at the top of the spreadsheet to input values from your bill, and these are to be the same for all offer comparisons. Do not use the values from the ENERGY MADE easy in your columns.
The last row in the spreadsheet provides a rough estimate over a year of the additional cost or saving for each offer compared to your current plan in column 2. [Refer to row 69]
Sample Run Through
Step 1 – ENERGY MADE easy values entered into column 2 as a sample Current Plan. Column 1 to stay as a control/validation column.
Step 2 – Postal code 2600 (Canberra) used for comparison with the ENERGY MADE easy website from 2014. Filtered, sorted and the lowest offer selected. The Energy Price Fact Sheet was marked up with the corresponding spreadsheet row number and those values were transferred into column 3. The estimated yearly savings is $388.
Energy Price Fact Sheet ACT372279MR Example Marked Up with the corresponding spreadsheet row reference
Energy Comparison Template Filled Out with ENERGY MADE easy sample values and current offer values to compare
Next Step – ACTION
Now all that was fun. What now? Get on the blower, and lock in a lower energy bill.
Equipped with the wealth of data all compiled neatly in your spreadsheet, call your current provider and ask them to match or beat your lowest quote. If they won’t, ask them if you’ll have any exit fees and consider them.
If a switch to another retailer is favourable, call them to confirm their offer. After confirmation of the offer, pull the trigger, and the retailer should take care of the transfer in the background. But if you didn’t find a better deal after crunching the numbers, that is AWESOME cause you are already on the best deal!
File your spreadsheet and dust it off annually, to check where you stand. With the energy prices continually increasing, we as consumers MUST do whatever we can to keep those dollars in our pockets.
I would love to hear how you went and most importantly any savings you were able to discover. Therefore please share your results in the comments below.
My result: I performed this exercise last year and switched to the lowest offer at that time. I recently checked and found a better deal which led to an estimated yearly savings of $156. This amount isn’t bad as my average daily usage is only 7.51 kWh.
Skip the above and Just Do It For Me
Following the steps above is great fun. But if you would just like the completed spreadsheet sent to you with all offers, and you can reuse annually head over here for further details.