Three hours of free energy: how can North Shore households make the most of it?

As solar energy becomes a bigger player in Australia’s electricity grid, energy companies are offering free power in the middle of the day to encourage use while the sun's shining. 

But energy experts say that deal might not work for all households.

What happened: Starting this month, energy retailers are required to offer New South Wales households an energy plan with three hours of free electricity per day, between 11am and 2pm. The scheme’s purpose is to incentivise households to make use of Australia's abundance of solar energy in these hours.

• The period allows for a maximum amount of 24kwh for free during this period: this is more than most households use in an entire day. 

Sign up needed: The change is not automatic. Individual households will need to sign up to the scheme via their energy supplier. You don’t need your own rooftop solar to partake. All a household needs to get on board is a smart meter: the one with the LCD screen, not the analogue dials. 

As a caveat to the energy companies, they will be allowed to charge those on the plan slightly higher than average rates outside of these hours. But if households can shift their energy use into the free period, their savings can surpass these higher rates. 

How much energy a household will need to shift into the free window varies between different plans, and how much energy they will also use outside that window.

Who benefits? Rewiring Australia CEO Francis Vierboom told the Lorikeet the scheme offers opportunities for savings on electricity bills, but households should make sure their regular electricity use is high enough to make switching worthwhile.

He said regular households moving dishwasher or washing machine usage to the middle of the day likely won’t make any huge savings under the scheme. The real winners would be those with abnormally larger power demands such as pool pumps, electric vehicles charging from home and electric hot water tanks. 

• The operation of pool pumps can contribute up to 30 percent of an electricity bill, Vierboom said, but often have timer settings which would allow this demanding process to automatically fall within the free energy window.
  

• Areas such as St Ives, Mosman and Pymble have some of the highest rates of private pool ownership in Greater Sydney. 

The other big savers are home batteries. If a household has one, they can fill it up during the free hours and run on that energy for the rest of the day.

Why are we doing it? The federal government is forcing energy companies to offer this plan for multiple reasons. One is to make the overall power grid cheaper by shifting usage from the evening peak to midday.

But it’s also an attempt to shift general power consumption habits to accommodate for our changing electricity grid.

What does that mean: Back when our country’s electricity grid was powered predominantly by coal, off-peak hours (where energy companies would offer cheaper energy) were typically overnight, when general use was low but coal fired power plants needed to keep running. 

In 2026, the grid is increasingly supplied by renewable sources: wind, solar, hydro and battery storage. Unlike coal, the off peak hours for solar are in the middle of the day, when the sun is shining bright but many Australians are at work or otherwise not home using electricity.