As of 1 July 2026, benchmark electricity prices are falling across most of the National Electricity Market. The Australian Energy Regulator’s Default Market Offer for 2026–27 shows a stabilising grid. In New South Wales, South East Queensland and Victoria, residential reference prices dropped between 3.4% and 7.2%. Small businesses saw larger reductions.

Daily supply charges and feed-in tariffs are moving as well. Network operators and retailers are rebuilding prices around a grid that already has a huge amount of renewable generation.

The drop in benchmarks

  • South East Queensland (Energex): down 7.2%, about $155 a year.
  • New South Wales (Ausgrid, Endeavour, Essential): down between 3.4% and 7.7%, depending on zone and tariff.
  • South Australia (SA Power Networks): a 1.4% increase on flat rates, with slight decreases for time-of-use customers.
  • Small business: reductions between 6.8% and 20.9%, depending on region and tariff.

Wholesale generation costs are coming down as renewable supply grows. That is the main reason the overall DMO moved lower.

What is driving the change

A bill is mostly wholesale cost, the cost of generating power, and network cost, the poles and wires. Those two are moving in different directions.

Wholesale energy is cheaper because of wind, grid-scale batteries and rooftop solar. Daytime power is abundant, spot volatility has eased, and the grid is leaning less on expensive gas at peak. Network operators still have to turn a one-way grid into a system that can take power back from millions of homes. That investment is showing up in network charges.

Donut chart of a typical electricity bill: network costs, wholesale costs, retail costs, environmental costs and retail margins.

How retailers are responding

Retailers from AGL, Origin and EnergyAustralia through to GloBird, Momentum and Flow Power are rebalancing plans. Daily supply charges are rising to cover fixed network cost, while usage rates are falling because the energy itself is cheaper.

Flat feed-in tariffs keep falling. Some standard offers are a few cents, or zero. In the middle of the day the wholesale market is already flooded with solar, so a retailer cannot pay a premium for it.

Example chart comparing a fixed rate, a static time-of-use tariff and a dynamic time-of-use price across a weekday.

The Solar Sharer offer gives eligible households with a smart meter up to 24 kWh of free electricity for three hours in the middle of the day, often 11am to 2pm. That includes renters without panels. The point is to run heavy appliances when renewable energy is abundant.

Automation is the way through it

Illustration of a home connected to rooftop solar, a battery and the household load.

When power is abundant it is cheap, or free. When the evening peak strains the grid, it is expensive. Households with solar and a battery can charge when power is cheap and export when the grid needs it, on time-of-use or wholesale plans such as Amber Electric or Flow Power. Watching spot prices and changing battery settings by hand does not last.

Gridkeeper is the cloud platform for that. Retailer tariff structures are mapped in the product, including Solar Sharer windows, wholesale plans and time-of-use. You can hold battery charge through the day, charge from the grid when wholesale prices go negative, and dispatch stored power on the evening peak. FoxESS and Deye connect directly in the cloud, without a local server or Modbus wiring.

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