We costed three hours of free power against four households

Free is not the same as cheapest

Since 1 July 2026, retailers in New South Wales, South East Queensland and South Australia have had to offer at least one plan carrying three hours of free electricity in the middle of the day. In NSW and South East Queensland the window is 11am to 2pm; in South Australia it is 12pm to 3pm. You do not need rooftop solar, renters are eligible, and up to 24 kilowatt-hours a day inside the window costs nothing. If you want the mechanics, our Solar Sharer explainer covers how the offer works and who can take it.

This article asks a narrower question: on real plan data, does taking it leave you better off?

Three free hours is only free inside the window. You still pay a daily supply charge every day of the year, you still pay for everything used outside the window, and — as the scheme’s own critics have pointed out — retailers recover the revenue they give away in the window by charging more for the hours around it. Whether you come out ahead depends on whether what you save inside the window beats what you pay everywhere else.

What we did

We built four household load shapes, split each one into peak and off-peak using Ausgrid’s real network time-of-use windows, and costed every electricity plan available on the Ausgrid network through the same ranking engine that produces the comparisons on this site — 2,245 plans in total, as at 25 September 2026.

The free window is priced from the load curve, not assumed. Our cost engine credits only the electricity a household actually uses between 11am and 2pm, valued at the rate it would otherwise have been charged. A household that uses nothing at midday gets no credit, and a household that shifts a great deal into the window gets a large one.

One thing to be clear about before the numbers: these are modelled load shapes, not measurements from real homes. They are there to show how the answer changes with usage pattern, not to tell any particular household what it would pay. Your own bill is the only thing that answers that.

The result: the free window lost every time

For each household below, the first figure is the cheapest plan carrying the free window, and the second is the cheapest plan of any kind available to the same house.

Working couple, out all day — 4,000 kWh a year, 6% of it at midday. Best free-window plan $1,935 a year; best plan overall $1,192. Taking the free window costs $743 more.

Family at home during the day — 7,000 kWh a year, 17% at midday. Best free-window plan $2,528; best plan overall $1,540. A $988 penalty.

EV charged deliberately at midday — 9,000 kWh a year, 33% inside the window. Best free-window plan $2,686; best plan overall $1,743. Still $943 worse, despite a third of all consumption being free.

Solar and battery household — 2,000 kWh of grid import, essentially none at midday. Best free-window plan $1,293; best plan overall $865. A $428 penalty, which is unsurprising: a battery already absorbs the midday surplus, so there is nothing left for the free window to discount.

We tried hard to make it win, and could not

A result where something loses in all four test cases invites the obvious objection: perhaps the test cases were unfair. So we pushed it.

We took a 6,000 kWh household and moved an ever-larger share of its entire annual consumption into the three-hour window, to find the point at which the free window finally pays. At 30 per cent of all usage inside the window, the free-window plan was still $674 a year worse. At 50 per cent, $363 worse. At 75 per cent — three-quarters of everything a home uses in a year, compressed into three hours a day — it was $143 worse.

At 90 per cent, which no household could physically achieve, the free-window plan was still $98 a year more expensive than simply picking the cheapest plan on the market.

The free window is real, and it is worth real money. It just never got large enough to overcome the plans that carry it.

Why: the offers are standing offers

The explanation is in how the obligation was written. Retailers were required to offer at least one plan with a free window. They were not required to make it their best plan.

Most complied using a standing offer — the default tariff a customer lands on when they have never chosen anything, and generally among the most expensive rates a retailer publishes. Bolting a free window onto an expensive tariff does not necessarily produce a cheap one.

There is a second catch for solar households specifically. Of the 102 Solar Sharer plans available on the Ausgrid network in our catalogue, 19 pay nothing at all for exported solar — a zero-cent feed-in tariff. Across all other Ausgrid plans the rate is about 8 per cent. If you have panels, taking a free-window plan carries roughly double the chance of surrendering your export credit entirely, and for a household exporting several thousand kilowatt-hours a year that can cost more than the free window ever returns.

When it could still be the right choice

None of this means the offer is a trick, and it does not mean it will lose for everyone.

Our modelling covers one network in one state on one day. Rates change, retailers add genuinely competitive free-window plans, and the answer will move. A retailer that chooses to attach a free window to a sharp market offer rather than a standing offer would change this result immediately.

There are also reasons to take it that are not about the annual total. If you cannot compare plans easily, a scheme guaranteeing free power is a floor under the worst outcome. If your household genuinely runs at midday — pool pump, dishwasher, washing machine, EV, ducted heating on a timer — you convert more of the window than our shapes assume. And 24 kilowatt-hours a day is a generous cap.

The mistake would be assuming free means cheapest and never checking. That is exactly the assumption the word free is good at producing.

How to check it for your house in two minutes

There is no general answer to this question, only your answer, and it is not difficult to get.

Upload one recent bill and we will cost every plan available at your address — free-window plans included — on your own usage, and rank them cheapest first. If a Solar Sharer plan is genuinely your best option, it will appear at the top, and if it is not, you will see by exactly how much.

If you would rather work it through yourself first, the free electricity bill estimator shows how much of a bill is the fixed daily charge that no free window can touch, and the EV charging cost calculator shows what shifting a charge into the middle of the day is actually worth.