Solar Analytics Plan Optimiser Unravels Complex Electricity Tariffs

Nigel Morris, who heads up business development at Solar Analytics, readily admits electricity plan comparison products aren’t usually particularly exciting.

Still, it’s clear talking to Morris that Solar Analytics is excited about its recently-launched Plan Optimiser, and Morris reckons both subscribers and solar installers will be as well.

Morris told SolarQuotes this week that all too often installers are expected to have the best electricity plans at their fingertips – and they don’t.

After all, in putting together Plan Optimiser, Solar Analytics found several thousand plans across the country. Most people are eligible for at least 20 different offers, with some able to choose between 38 different retail offerings.

And, as the Australian Energy Regulator recently found in its State Of The Energy Market 2021 report (PDF), energy providers tweak plans constantly; partly because that makes it hard for anybody to keep track of which electricity plan is the best.

Hence the launch of Plan Optimiser, a service Solar Analytics is offering as a standard inclusion to all existing and new customers. This enables a subscriber to “go in at any time, and look at what plan is best for them, and what switching plans would save them,” he told us.

Morris said each month Solar Analytics uploads the latest electricity plans to keep the tariffs up-to-date.

Plan Optimiser Can Compare Time Of Use Tariffs

The other key angle is Plan Optimiser draws on the huge amount of data collected from Solar Analytics customers.

“By using real data, we can do some extremely cool things,” Morris said.

“We can tell when energy is being used, when it’s being generated, and we can see if a battery is connected.”

This means the Plan Optimiser can go beyond just comparing per-kWh prices to letting a customer know which time-of-use plans will provide the most benefit, as the company can see the time a customer is importing and exporting power.

Also, as a customer’s electricity demand and generation profiles change over time, Morris said Plan Optimiser can track those changes and suggest suitable alternatives.

Ever since the launch of Solar Analytics, the company has wanted to put together a software offering that would let its customers get the best possible electricity plan price, and Morris told me the company has devoted the last two years to collecting and analysing customer data and building algorithms to match customer electricity usage to the available offers.

“The main effort has been going on over the last year”, Morris said.

“That involved testing theories we had, capturing the plan data the right way, scraping and uploading that data from providers, and developing the algorithms.”

Other work included creating a digital bill uploader (due for imminent launch) and creating the comprehensive tariff engine, “My Electricity Bill”, to retain customers’ historical data.

Also on the roadmap are optimisers for batteries, electric vehicle charging/discharging, and virtual power plants (VPPs).

“Most solar owners don’t realise how much is left on the table”, Morris said.

Mostly they get as far as suspecting they’re on the wrong plan, but aren’t sure, and are rightly intimidated by how hard electricity plan comparison can get.

“Energy plans are deliberately built like that – providers are tweaking to get the most perceived advantage. Some plans look great until you get over 10kW of solar, then the whole deal changes. It’s mindbogglingly complex and constantly changing.”

That’s why the number of people switching providers has been falling for the last three years (according to the Australian Energy Regulator): nobody wants to analyse energy offers to work out if they should change.

“The providers have made the comparison of plans incredibly complicated”, Morris said.

He said when Solar Analytics analysed their pilot group, they found 70% of households would save money by switching electricity plans, at an average saving of $400 a year. With Plan Optimiser now in the wild:

“we expect to find that between 80% and 90% of people will be able to find savings.”

And if you don’t have Solar Analytics installed, you can find the cheapest flat-rate electricity plan¹ in about 30 seconds using SolarQuotes’ own electricity price and feed in tariff comparison tool.

If you have 12 months of bills to hand you will get a very accurate comparison. If you don’t, you’ll still get an excellent estimate based on typical imports and exports for your location and system size.

By the way, you can learn more about the many benefits of installing advanced solar power system monitoring here.

Original Source: https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/solar-analytics-plan-optimiser/