How we work out what you should pay

Five rules we hold ourselves to — and the one thing about energy pricing nobody tells you.

We use your real bills, not averages

When you upload bills, we read the actual usage, rates and charges off them. Every number we show is computed from your consumption — and we tell you how much data it rests on ("4 bills, 365 days"). More bills, especially across seasons, means less guessing.

When we have to estimate, we say so — and how

Some things can't be known from a bill alone. The big one: if you don't have a smart meter, nobody knows what time of day you use power — including your retailer. For time-of-use plans we use the same measurement the energy market itself settles basic-meter customers on: AEMO's published Net System Load Profile for your own distribution area, half hour by half hour, with a different shape for weekdays, weekends and each season. Across the market about a third of a household's power lands between 3pm and 9pm.

This matters, because time-of-use plans often put their highest price exactly on that evening peak. A plan advertising "free power 11am–2pm" sounds great — but a typical household only uses about 12% of its power in that window, and may pay far more for the third used in the evening. A flat rate quietly protects most households. We model that honestly, so a plan that only wins for lunchtime-heavy households won't top your list on marketing alone.

Plans you can't actually get don't make your list

Meter compatibility — time-of-use plans need a smart or interval meter. If your bills show a basic meter, those plans are shown separately as "possible with a meter upgrade", never as your headline recommendation.
Eligibility — plans requiring solar, a battery, or a seniors card are filtered or labelled using what your bills tell us.
Uncertain pricing — wholesale-passthrough plans and plans with charges we can't model (like demand charges) rank below fully-modelled plans, with a note saying why.

Savings come with a "how"

We never show a savings number without its mechanics: daily supply charge before → after, usage rates before → after (in ¢/kWh or ¢/MJ you can check against your own bill), and the annual dollars each part contributes. Conditional discounts (pay-on-time, direct debit) are shown as best-case, separately from the guaranteed price.

Prices move — we track them

We snapshot the whole market's plans daily. That's how we can tell you things like "your plan's rates rose 12% since your last bill" — and it means our comparisons use what plans cost today, not what a months-old bill remembers.

The thing nobody tells you: your plan has two prices

An energy plan's name — "Taronga Flex", "Value Saver" — is a label, not a price. At any moment the same plan usually has:

The price you pay. Set when you signed up, then moved by "price change" letters. It only ever appears on your bills and letters — often not even in your retailer's own portal.
The price they advertise. What a brand-new customer gets for the same-named plan today — usually lower than yours, because advertised prices chase new customers while your price quietly drifts up. The gap is the loyalty tax, and your bill's mandatory "could you save?" box is the regulator forcing your retailer to hint at it.

When you upload your bills, we work out both from your documents and today's market data, and show the gap in dollars — then it's your choice whether to ask your retailer about it or switch.

What the flags mean

Flag	Plain English
`tou_split_from_standard_profile`	No smart meter data, so time-of-use costs use the published standard usage pattern for your distribution area — AEMO's Net System Load Profile, which the market itself settles on. The flag carries the area it used, and `NEM` means we could not tell which area you are in and used the national one.
`tou_priced_plan`	Price depends on when you use power (needs a smart meter).
`demand_charges_not_modelled`	This plan charges for your peak power draw, which we can't know without interval data — its estimate is incomplete, so it ranks below fully-modelled plans.
`wholesale_price_estimate`	Prices follow the wholesale spot market; the retailer's number is an estimate, not a commitment.
`fixed_discount_assumed_annual`	The plan states a fixed-dollar discount without a clear period; we assumed once per year.
`banded_supply_charge_first_band_used`	The plan's daily charge varies by usage band; we used the first band.

Everything above applies identically to the API and MCP interface — agents get the same flags and the same honesty rules as this website.