Our scenario was exactly the same, excepting the main meter was an old style digital unit with three registers but it may as well have been analogue as it was manual meter reads and flat rate tariff, plus a controlled load analogue disk meter.
Sad to say you will lose that.
Talk with them, I went onto Switch Saver plan and they gave me $150 credit. It's a worse plan all round but
all the new plans are.
I also asked them to arrange for a meter upgrade so I could get back to an EV plan. I figured I'd get ahead of the game in prep for our solar installation as that can't operate without a smart meter anyway.
Our solar PV (14.725 kW) goes in next week and the 24 kWh battery will follow, timing just depends on today's election result.
Mine includes the daily charge for the controlled load. If your new place doesn't have a CL then the daily fee will be lower. Table below shows how much the CL adds to the daily charge for us.
This is my comparison of the three Powershop plans based on our average daily consumption so far in our new place (first "CURRENT" plan is the Powershop Switch Saver). We've had no heating or cooling energy consumption in that mix (we've not needed it but this place has none anyway - we are installing that soon as well).
For the comparison I've assumed my EV charging energy will all move to Super Off-Peak and that's the only energy consumption in that window. That's not quite going to be true of course but it's a reasonable starting assumption.
View attachment 36549
The rates have all gone up, especially the daily charges. The last EV Day plan was too good to last and I'm pretty sure they were going to migrate us eventually to newer tariffs.
At the moment the EV Night plan is looking like the choice for us. Solar will take care of the day, while the night plan is 5 c/kWh from 12-4 AM.
Once we have the battery I'll review again.
Just a note:
It takes a while for a smart meter installation to happen.
I requested the meter upgrade 17 March 2025.
It was installed on 8 April 2025.
Even so that's not the end of it.
I spoke with Powershop earlier this week requesting to be changed to an EV plan, but they were unable to do so even though we've had the smart meter for several weeks now and the interval data is showing in their portal as normal.
Turns out that even though my meter had been upgraded, that did not automatically trigger a change of Essential Energy's underlying tariff, I am still being billed as if I had the old meters.
Powershop have now initiated the request for tariff change with EE, that can take 1-3 weeks, so I can't get onto the EV plan until that's done.
The new default EE tariff is Solar Soaker.
Peak is 7-10 AM and 3-10 PM every day. Off-peak all other times.
If the government is returned today, then the new battery rebate program is, frankly, very generous and makes home batteries a no brainer, especially in NSW.
That's because can be combined with the NSW govt peak demand reduction scheme rebate. If it comes to pass then my Sigenergy 24 kWh battery stack is going to cost under $6k fully installed. The more expensive bit is the solar PV, inverter and Gateway, which I'd have anyway whether or not I was going to install a battery.
