Bondi Junction Energy Watch

Your solar and battery already cover nearly two thirds of the house. The problem is not how much you buy — it's when, and how hard.

One-off welcome credits of $200 on electricity and $200 on gas apply to your first bills, plus a year of complimentary NRMA membership. Those are first-year only — the comparison below is on ongoing rates, which is what matters from bill three onward.

Confirm both credits have actually landed before giving notice — the electricity one arrives on your first bill, but gas transfers can take up to 90 days to complete, so the gas credit may run later than the electricity one. Check the terms of the credit offer for how the three months is counted: from acceptance, from supply start, or from first bill.

Where the $2,228 goes

Usage is only 43% of this bill. Two fixed-ish charges — supply and demand — account for $1,324 a year before you switch anything on.

April, May, September and October carry no demand charge — the whole day is off-peak. The single half-hour on 26 August cost about $40 more than an ordinary evening would have; nothing else you did that month mattered to the charge.

What reserving capacity would be worth

The demand charge only needs the single worst half-hour of each month covered — about 2.5 kWh at 5 kW. The battery has 14.4. The problem is allocation, not capacity: it spends everything on daytime self-consumption and has nothing left at 6pm. Holding back a few kWh for 3–9pm, and topping up overnight at the off-peak rate on days that need it, is the whole fix. Overnight charging sits outside the window, so it creates no demand charge of its own.

This is a setting in the SolaX app, not a purchase: Peak Shaving mode if the inverter offers it, otherwise a TOU work-mode schedule reserving a minimum state of charge across 3–9pm with scheduled off-peak grid charging. I took read-only API access deliberately, so I can measure what the battery does but cannot change how it behaves.

The $1.10/day supply charge is my assumption, not Tesla's figure. Tesla has published no daily charge at all — I used $1.10 because Ausgrid market offers run 92c–147c, and the total needs some number in that slot. Swap in 92c and the estimate falls to about $1,738; swap in 147c and it rises to about $1,939. The 4c average export capture is likewise mine. At 65–80% peak share the range is $1,716–$1,848 at $1.10/day. Treat every Tesla figure on this page as provisional until that one line is published.

Don't confuse this with Tesla's previous Australian offer. The Tesla Energy Plan, run with Energy Locals, paired time-of-use rates with up to five years of extra Powerwall warranty and bill credits of up to $220 a year for batteries joining Tesla's virtual power plant. That plan closed on 30 September 2025 and its benefits do not carry over — the new Dynamic plan publishes no sign-up credit, no warranty benefit and no VPP payment beyond an unquantified Powerwall FCAS credit.

What "90% of real-time wholesale" actually pays

The trap is using the all-day average wholesale price. Your exports land at midday, which is the cheapest part of the day — so the number that matters is the solar-weighted price. IPART publishes exactly that for NSW, and it is the right yardstick here.

Realistic band: $55–$105 a year, call it $80. That is roughly what a 4.5c flat feed-in would pay — better than your current 3c, worse than GloBird's 6c, and well short of a solid 8–12c offer. IPART's benchmark fell from 4.8–7.3c last year because more homes export at once; and NSW spot averaged $75/MWh in Q2 2026, down 53% year on year to a six-year low. So this estimate is drawn from an unusually cheap market — the credit could rise, but the downside has no floor, which a flat tariff does.

The evening row is the one genuinely attractive number, and it is a trap on this plan. A kWh you export at 6pm earns about 16c. The same kWh kept at home avoids a 49.71c import. Self-consumption wins better than three to one, so the right move under Tesla would be to hoard the battery, not trade with it — which is the same thing you should be doing anyway, without the 49.71c peak rate attached.

Two things make this a poor fit specifically for you

1. Your consumption shape is the wrong way round. Solar covers your middle of the day, so what's left to buy is concentrated in the evening — 75% of your grid import lands inside 3–9pm. A tariff that charges 49.71c in exactly that window is aimed at the opposite household.
2. You have a SolaX battery, not a Powerwall. The Grid Services Credit is Powerwall FCAS, and Tesla's automated wholesale arbitrage — the thing that makes a dynamic plan pay — runs on their own hardware. You would take the volatile export credit without the machinery that earns from it. Whether a non-Tesla household is even eligible isn't stated.

The one scenario where it competes

If you fix the battery first and cut peak import to ~800 kWh, Tesla lands near $1,353 — better than ENGIE-fixed (~$1,801) but still behind GloBird's flat rate at $1,160, which doesn't care what time you buy. A dynamic plan only beats a cheap flat rate if you actively arbitrage the export side, and your 14.4 kWh battery is already fully committed to self-consumption. Worth re-checking once the supply charge and eligibility are published; not worth acting on now.

Your figure is modelled on your four daily blocks with winter-weighted consumption; the others are the retailers' published annual estimates at the same benchmark. Block pricing means a low headline rate can still cost more — Kogan's 3.47c/MJ is the cheapest usage rate on this list and the fourth-cheapest bill.

High headline feed-in rates are usually capped at a daily kWh limit and paired with higher usage rates — the sensible target is a solid 8–12c uncapped, not the biggest number advertised. Worth one call to ENGIE: moving to a better feed-in plan with the same retailer avoids a transfer entirely. Keep this in proportion though: at 1,800 kWh exported, the whole feed-in question is worth about a tenth of the demand charge.

1. Don't switch yet. Collect the $400 first — waiting until the end of October costs about $50 and lands you just before the summer demand season starts. Use the intervening weeks for the questions below, so you can move the week the credits clear.
2. Ask three retailers one question: “At 88 Mill Hill Rd, Bondi Junction, will I be on a flat or time-of-use retail tariff with no demand charge?” Ausgrid assigns the network demand tariff to your smart meter, but retailers differ in whether they pass it through to you or absorb it into a flat rate. If a retailer absorbs it, the saving is real and large; if they pass it through, switching gains you little. This is the single thing worth confirming.
3. Ask ENGIE and Ausgrid whether the meter can move off RES DEMAND. If the network tariff itself can change, you keep your retailer and lose the charge.
4. Find out what ran at 6:30pm on 26 August. It pulled 10.16 kW for half an hour and cost about $40 more than a normal evening. If it's something schedulable — car charging, a heat pump, laundry — moving it past 9pm is free money for as long as you stay on this tariff.
5. Set the battery to reserve charge for 3–9pm and to top up overnight on poor-solar days. Worth roughly $340–$450 a year on its own, and it works whether or not you ever switch retailer. Do this one first — it is the only item here that pays off without a phone call.
6. Gas stays worth a switch on its own merits — about $310 a year, independent of everything above.

A note on the numbers: your monthly peak demand is measured from your inverter's own grid readings at 5-minute resolution, aggregated to clock half-hours. Ausgrid meters the same quantity, so the two should agree closely — but check one against a real ENGIE bill before acting on the largest figure here. November and December have no meter history yet and are estimated from your January–March peaks.