One network for the whole state, the highest rooftop-solar penetration in the world, and a solar-sponge tariff built to deal with it. South Australia is the most unusual grid in the NEM.
South Australia has a single distributor, SA Power Networks, which removes the network-zone lottery that complicates NSW and Victoria. What it adds instead is the most solar-saturated grid in the National Electricity Market, and a tariff structure built specifically around that: midday power is deliberately cheap because there is too much of it.
SA Power Networks distributes to the entire state, so unlike NSW or Victoria there is no network-zone question to resolve before a comparison means anything. Your address still sets your tariff, but not a different set of regulated network charges.
SA Power Networks runs a genuine solar-sponge window from 10am to 3pm every day, alongside an evening peak. The intent is to pull demand into the middle of the day, when the state's rooftop solar is producing more than it can use.
For a household that can shift heavy loads to the middle of the day, this is the most valuable time-of-use window in the country. It also cuts the other way: a high evening peak punishes a household that cannot shift.
Your distributor is set by your address and cannot be switched. Its charges are regulated, so no retailer can discount them away — which is why a comparison has to be run for your actual network, not a state average.
South Australia is covered by the AER's Default Market Offer, which caps standing-offer rates and is the reference price every market offer must be advertised against.
Source: AER — Default Market Offer
These are the network windows published by each distributor, not your retailer’s billing windows — a retail plan can bill different times. We use your own plan’s rates when we cost a comparison.
up to $291.27 a year
Concession names, amounts and eligibility are set by government and change — most reset on 1 July. We publish only figures we could verify against an official source, and we link every one so you can check it yourself. There is currently no federal energy bill rebate: the Energy Bill Relief Fund ended on 31 December 2025 and was not renewed in the 2026-27 Budget.
150 g CO2-e per kWh
This is an emissions figure and never a price signal. Your rate is fixed by your plan and does not move with the grid, so nobody should tell you power is "cheaper right now" because the grid happens to be cleaner. Where it does matter: it sets how much carbon each kilowatt-hour of solar you self-consume actually displaces.
Upload a bill and we reproduce your current cost first, then cost all 915 residential electricity plans the AER publishes for South Australia, from the 28 retailers we track on the same usage and rank them by real annual dollars. Because we take no commissions, the ranking is not for sale.
Every retailer publishing a residential electricity plan to the AER for South Australia, straight from the data we compare. We rank all of them the same way.
Yes. South Australia is part of the National Electricity Market, so you can switch to any retailer that services your network. Switching is free, does not touch your physical supply, and most plans have no exit fee.
We compare all 915 residential electricity plans the AER publishes for South Australia, from the 28 retailers we track. We re-check them nightly. We exclude wholesale spot-price pass-through plans, because the AER reference rates for those are not what a customer actually pays — we would rather leave a plan out than rank it on a number we know is wrong.
SA Power Networks distributes to the whole state. The distributor runs the poles and wires and its charges are set by the regulator, not your retailer. It is not something you can shop for.
Default Market Offer (DMO 8), set by the Australian Energy Regulator for 1 July 2026 – 30 June 2027. South Australia is covered by the AER's Default Market Offer, which caps standing-offer rates and is the reference price every market offer must be advertised against.
The main one is the South Australian Energy Concession, up to $291.27 a year. Eligibility and amounts are set by government and change — always confirm with the official source before relying on a figure.
SA Power Networks: 6am–10am and 4pm–12am, every day. These are the network windows published by each distributor, not your retailer’s billing windows — a retail plan can bill different times. We use your own plan’s rates when we cost a comparison.
Over the last 85 days of AEMO's carbon-intensity index, the SA1 region averaged about 150 grams of CO2-e per kilowatt-hour, which ranks 2 of 5 NEM regions we track (1 = cleanest). This is an emissions figure, not a price signal: your rate is set by your plan and does not move with the grid.
No. We take no commission from any retailer, which is why we can tell you to stay put when staying put is right. You pay a small yearly subscription (around $39), so the ranking answers to you.
Every figure on this page was checked against a government primary source. Where we could not verify a number, we left it out rather than estimate it — that is the whole reason to pay us instead of trusting a page funded by retailer commissions.
Upload one bill. We reproduce it, cost the market against it, and prove the saving in dollars — or tell you to stay exactly where you are.
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