Since February, war in the Middle East has been disrupting oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, and electricity prices in the European Union and Japan have jumped around 30 per cent as a result. Australia's wholesale electricity prices did the opposite. They fell by about 30 per cent year on year in the first half of 2026.
Petrol is another matter, of course. Filling the car still exposes you to whatever the oil market is doing (which is one way of saying there's never been a more persuasive advertisement for an EV charging off your own solar!) But when it comes to powering homes, Australia has managed to insulate itself from a shock that's hurting most of the world.
The numbers come from the International Energy Agency's mid-year report, which also expects our wholesale prices to be among the lowest in the world through the rest of 2026 and into 2027, with a further 5 per cent decline predicted in the back half of this year.
The falls show up in every state in the National Electricity Market. Between April and June, the Australian Energy Market Operator's latest quarterly update shows Victoria's wholesale prices down 60 per cent year on year to $56/MWh, New South Wales down 53 per cent to $75/MWh, Queensland down 44 per cent to $67/MWh, and Tasmania and South Australia both landing at $86/MWh, down 39 and 38 per cent respectively.
The agency is clear about what shielded us: Australia's strong uptake of renewables and rapidly expanding battery storage. Solar floods the grid with cheap energy during the day, batteries soak it up, and less coal and gas is needed to cover the expensive evening peak. As AAP reported, many Australian households have stepped up by charging their batteries during the daytime, and some have been earning money selling their stored solar back to the grid, particularly in South Australia, where demand has at times been tight.
While much of the world is scrambling, Australia built its way to some of the cheapest wholesale electricity anywhere. It's a genuine good news story, and households with solar and batteries deserve a decent share of the credit.
Now for the real question. Wholesale prices fell 30 per cent. But did your bill?
Why the 30 per cent may never reach your bill
If recent history is a guide, a lot of that 30 per cent will never reach you. Traditional retailers have a well-worn set of moves for keeping the gap between what they pay and what you pay as wide as possible, and we've watched them run several of these plays in the past year alone.
Holding your rate where it is and pocketing the difference. A traditional retailer buys energy on the wholesale market, adds a markup, and sells it to you at a fixed rate. When wholesale prices fall, nothing forces your rate down with them. The retailer decides how much of the saving to pass on, and when, and every month of delay is margin.
Burying costs in fixed charges. Earlier this month we wrote about customers who were told benchmark prices were falling, then opened rate-rise notices from their retailers. The trick was in the bill structure. Retailers trimmed the usage rate, the part that makes headlines, while lifting the fixed daily supply charge, the part you pay no matter what. According to SBS, some customers faced fixed-charge increases of up to 86 per cent. The Federal Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, has asked the regulator to examine whether shifting costs into fixed charges instead of passing savings through complies with energy market laws. If a 13 per cent hike to a supply charge can arrive in the same week as a headline about falling prices, a 30 per cent wholesale drop is no guarantee of anything.
Saving their best deals for new customers. Even when retailers do sharpen their offers to reflect cheaper wholesale energy, those offers go to new customers. The ACCC found that households on plans more than three years old were paying on average $221 more per year than customers on newer plans - and up to $408 in South Australia. Falling costs become a marketing tool for winning sign-ups, not a saving for the people already on the books.
Underpaying you for your exports. The IEA report describes households selling stored solar back to the grid during tight evening periods. On most plans, that export earns a fixed feed-in rate of a few cents per kilowatt hour, no matter what the energy is actually worth at that moment. Your battery discharges into a peak, the retailer collects the wholesale value, and you get pocket change.
This is what happens when a retailer's profit is the gap between wholesale costs and your bill. The savings are real, the system is working, and the retail layer in between is built to absorb as much of the benefit as it can.
What it looks like without the retail layer in the way
Amber passes through the wholesale price of energy with no markup. Our only margin is a flat monthly subscription, so we earn the same whether prices are high or low. There's no gap to widen, which means every one of those four moves stops making sense. A 30 per cent fall in wholesale prices isn't something we decide whether to hand back. It's simply the price you pay.
Exports work the same way. Instead of a fixed feed-in rate of a few cents, you earn the real wholesale price for the energy you sell, which climbs sharply during an evening price spike. SmartShift, our battery automation, handles the timing, charging your battery when energy is cheap or free and selling your spare stored energy back when prices peak. You keep 100 per cent of what your battery earns.
The IEA report shows this behaviour is already helping hold the whole country's prices down: households charging by day and exporting into the evening. What most of those households don't get is paid properly for it. On a plan that pays wholesale value instead of a flat few cents, the same daily routine stops being a favour to the grid and starts being income.
Cheap wholesale prices are here. The question is who gets them.
Australia's renewables and batteries just carried the country through a global supply shock, and the IEA expects the cheap wholesale prices to continue. More renewables in the mix, from 33 per cent of generation in 2025 to a forecast 37 per cent this year, means more cheap daytime energy and bigger swings for batteries to trade on.
The wholesale market has delivered. Whether your bill delivers depends entirely on what sits between you and it. If the 30 per cent hasn't shown up on yours, see what you'd pay, and earn, with Amber.
