Any Thoughts or Experience on Using Wholesale Electricity Providers Like EcoSmart

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  hacatan on 26/08/2026 - 08:42

  The gotcha will be if prices spike, between 7.30 and 8pm on 4th of this month the spot price was $4.32/kWh! However that appeared to be a one off, the spot prices have been pretty low all year which is why the retailers are making money hand over fist, they set their customers fixed prices expecting the spot to be much higher. Check your Lines company charges, at the moment Vector in Auckland are charging a surcharge of 10.5c/kWh during peak times daily if you buy on the spot market as well as a flat rate 3.02c/kWh. The trick would be to have enough battery capacity to cover the peak times then top up off peak, seems a valid model. Check out https://www.emi.ea.govt.nz/Wholesale/Reports/W_P_C?_si=v|3
  to view historical spot price data. To get c/kWh take the price given $/MWh and move the decimal point one to the left so $66.16/MWh is 6.616c/kWh.
  I was buying on the spot market Dec 25 to last month but with no solar or batteries and was pretty happy with it, I now have solar so have moved to fixed buyback rates which I’m hoping will be better than spot buyback with the current low prices.

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    dryburn on 26/08/2026 - 15:48

    Yes looking at the historical graph there were some periods where the spot prices were really bad like 2024 and parts of 2025 but you can switch fairly easily.
    Solar may be an open for me in the future but our house isn't that well positioned to get optimal daylight, but still something I would look into the future.

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      CheapAzChips on 26/08/2026 - 17:12

      It would be interesting to map a typical day of excess solar generation and grid supplementation on a typical day of spot prices. Wholesale spot prices make higher power usage cheaper if you can load shift, but it also means you're getting much less for your exported power most of the time.

      You can definitely make money by buying and selling through the day if you have sufficient battery storage, but I think you'd need a lot of storage to make it worth it, and you're still limited as to how much you can export when prices spike, by the lines company.

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        dryburn on 26/08/2026 - 17:37

        No Battery or Solar. I have exported my hourly usage and compared to the historical and would save $30-$50 without shifting our usage. So I imagine shifting by the help of some automations could help bring more savings.

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    jackvdbuk on 27/08/2026 - 10:22

    I think this is much cheaper across the board , i currently pay 0.32 per kwh all day and based on the below , i would be better off 99% of the time?

    Am i missing something here?

    This says:

    And in a dry year it looks like this. Over the 12 months to Aug 2024 — the worst 12-month stretch in the data — Auckland averaged 23.2 c/kWh — about 3.1× the past year. The most expensive month alone (Aug 2024) averaged 45.2 c, and one half-hour reached 493 c

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  liz181 on 25/08/2026 - 22:02

  Following

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    Alan6984 on 25/08/2026 - 22:31

    That's nice to let them know rather than doing it silently :-)

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  Alan6984 on 25/08/2026 - 22:32

  … any gotcha's with this model.

  The spot price when its at a peak?

  However, if you have sufficient storage, I guess you can mitigate that risk somewhat.

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  hacatan on 27/08/2026 - 09:09

  I use plug in Grid Connect devices from Bunnings to shift loads up to 10amps, if you’re tech savvy you can program them to switch on/off with fluctuations in the spot price.

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  Zyo on 31/08/2026 - 08:41

  Does battery storage only work best with solar?
  Would it also be beneficial to reduce peak usage like this

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    Alan6984 on 31/08/2026 - 09:56

    Does battery storage only work best with solar?
    Would it also be beneficial to reduce peak usage like this

    I doubt the payback would be there, but if you find a way that makes economic sense, pease do post.

    Most batteries seem to store something like 10 to 15 kWh of power. At, say, 35c per kwH (roughly average rates from power companies currently), that means you can store up to about $4.00 of power in a wall battery.

    Installation costs say $10,000 (not sure)? If I can get, say, 5% elsewhere (investments, pay off debt or whatever), then it needs to return at least $500 pa just to cover the interest paid or lost. Maybe if you get a 1% eco-loan and it costs you $100 pa in interest? However, the battery will have a life of maybe twenty years (again, not sure), but that means you have to cover that as well, so $500 pa in depreciation, making it at least $600 pa all up even at a 1% loan.

    I haven't run the numbers beyond that, but it sounds improbable you'll get $600 pa (say, $2 per day) of savings from storing up to $4.00 of electricity and playing arbitrage? However, those are all just very rough numbers in my head for a gut feeling.

    Happy to be proven wrong though!

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  dryburn on 27/10/2026 - 12:27

  Update:
  We have saved about $100 last month and could save more if we shifted our power usage to the cheaper times of the day.

  I haven't automated turning off hot water cylinders yet but will in the future.

  Spot prices have been relatively low but at times it does go up to 30c/kw but my average for the month is 7c/kwh.

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    jackvdbuk on 27/10/2026 - 12:40

    Yes its been great lately. Free electric most of this weekend or averaging extremely low (0-2c) assume because of the long weekend everyone out.

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