Picture a house with five people. A pool pump running most of the day, ducted heating working through a cold winter and an EV plugged in overnight. Someone is always home, something is always on… And the electricity bill reflects it.
For a home like this, the plan you’re on can have a much bigger impact than it would in a home with lower energy use. When you use a lot of energy, small differences in how a retailer prices can add up quickly. Here's what to look at when choosing an electricity plan.
Which plans suit households with high energy usage?
A larger household's bill is mostly the usage charge, which is what you pay for the energy you use. That's also where a traditional retailer makes its money. They buy energy on the wholesale market, add a markup and sell it back to you. The wider the gap between what they pay and what you pay, the more they earn.
If you use a lot of energy, that gap is paid on every kilowatt-hour you use.. The more energy you use, the more money the retailer makes from your household.
Amber works differently. We pass through the wholesale price with no markup, and our only margin is a flat monthly subscription. We don't earn more when your usage or your energy costs go up, so a heavy-use household isn't funding a bigger margin.
Is a flat rate or time-of-use better for big households?
On a flat rate (or single rate) plan, you pay the same amount per kWh whatever time you use it. If you used 20 kWh at 30 c/kWh, you'd pay $6.00. On a time-of-use plan, the rate depends on the time of day, with a higher rate in the peak period and a lower rate off-peak. Some plans add a shoulder period in between, and some vary by weekday, weekend or season.
For a big household, which option works better depends on when you use the most electricity and whether you can shift some of that usage to cheaper times. A flat rate is simple, but it gives you no reason to shift anything. A time-of-use plan rewards you for running heavy loads in the cheaper periods, but the periods are set in advance.
Amber's pricing follows the real-time price on the national electricity market. That price moves through the day, and can drop to almost nothing at midday and climb sharply around 6pm. A fixed rate can't reflect that, and neither can a battery running in self-consumption mode, which doesn't know what the market is doing. For a large household, that means the timing of your use can matter as much as the amount.
How does daily supply charge affect high users?
Every bill has a usage charge and a daily supply charge. The supply charge is a fixed amount you pay whether you use a lot of power or none. It covers things like grid connection, metering, administration, billing and environmental fees. Mostly it reflects network costs from the companies that maintain the poles and wires. Retailers pay those costs, then decide how to recover them from you.
Under changes the regulator has approved, retailers can now recover more of their operating costs through the fixed daily charge. According to SBS, some customers are facing increases of up to 86 per cent. Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen has asked the regulator to examine whether shifting costs into the fixed charge, rather than passing savings through, complies with energy market law.
For a high-usage household, the supply charge is a smaller share of a big bill, so the rate you pay per kWh does most of the work. It still pays to look at both numbers side by side, because a low usage rate can come with a high daily charge.
Amber is subject to the same regulated network costs as any retailer, and when they go up, we pass them through. We don't use the supply charge to recover margin, because our margin is the flat subscription. We make it clear on your bill what you're actually paying for, including the electricity you use, the poles and wires that deliver it to your home, and Amber's subscription fee.
Can high-usage households profit from wholesale pricing?
Wholesale pricing can work in two ways for a high-usage household. First, you can reduce what you pay by using more electricity when wholesale prices are low. If you have solar and a battery, you can also earn by exporting stored energy when wholesale prices rise.
That’s different from a traditional plan, where you might get a flat feed-in tariff of around 4c/kWh regardless of what your exported energy is worth at the time. With Amber, you get the wholesale price for your exports. SmartShift automatically charges your battery when electricity is cheap or free, then exports excess stored energy when prices are high. During rare price spikes, wholesale prices can reach up to $19/kWh, and Amber doesn’t take a cut of what you earn.
What plans suit homes with pools, ducted heating or EVs?
Pools, ducted heating and cooling, and EVs can all push a household’s electricity use up significantly. If you have one or more of them, it’s worth looking closely at not just how much your plan charges, but when and how those charges apply.
Pool pumps are a good example. Some traditional plans offer a controlled load tariff, where an appliance sits on a separate metered circuit and can only run at set times, usually off-peak. It's most often used for electric hot water, but can also apply to pool pumps and underfloor heating. The trade-off is that you don't choose the schedule.
Demand charges are also worth checking. Some plans add a charge based on the highest amount of power you draw from the grid at any one time, for example when lots of appliances are running together. A home with ducted heating, a pool pump and an EV charger can hit high peaks easily, so check whether a plan includes one.
Whatever is driving your energy use, the principle is the same. A plan that passes wholesale prices straight through, lets you see the real price and act on it. It also means the retailer isn't taking a bigger cut as your usage grows.
What to look for in a plan
The ACCC's December 2025 National Electricity Market report found households on plans more than three years old were paying, on average, $221 more per year than customers on newer plans. A high-usage household has more at stake in that gap than most.
When you compare plans, look at:
- How the retailer makes its money, and whether it earns more when you use more
- Whether the plan is flat rate or time-of-use, and how the periods line up with your heavy loads
- How much sits in the fixed daily supply charge
- Whether the plan includes a demand charge
- What you're paid for solar or battery exports
- Whether the price stays the same the longer you're a customer
See what you'd pay with Amber
If your household uses a lot of energy, get a quote with Amber and compare it to what you're paying now.
