Whether you’re cleaning the dishes from last nights party, doing the washing or vacuuming up the remains of whatever it was the dog was chewing on this morning – you won’t pay a cent for any power used during your free hour each day.
On average our customers save a further 9.5% on their bills with the free hour, with some extra dedicated people saving more than 30%.
So how do you become a master of the hour you ask? Here are our top tips to reach guru status
Level 1: Do stuff in the hour
Sounds basic, but the more you do in the hour, the more you will save. Dishes, washing, vacuuming during that time. Do things in the hour and you will do well.
Level 2: Use the app
The app shows you insight into your highest off peak hour by day, week or month. Know your stats and you will improve. You can also change the hour in the app. Remember that any change will apply to the day the change is made.
Level 3: Shower before the hour
Hot water uses heaps of energy. If you shower prior to the hour, then the hot water heats up during the hour!
Level 4 – GURU: All the above plus timers
Did you know that most washing machines, dish washers and dryers will allow you to set them to start on a delay or at a specific time? Plug-in timers start from under $5 for a simple one, but for a little more you can find timers you can set through your Wi-Fi using an app on your phone. If you establish a pattern using timers, where these devices always run in the hour, you will reach level four!
Hour of Power Basics
The off peak time slots you can choose your free hour are between 9am-5pm and 9pm-7am. There’s no limit on how many times you can change it, so feel free to adjust your free hour each day to suit your power needs.
You’ll be able to update your time on either your online account with us, or using our pretty awesome (if we do say ourselves!) app. This also helps you track both how much you’re saving, and what time of day you are using the most electricity.
The time where you have your free hour can be updated as often as you like, but one thing to keep in mind is any change you make before midnight is applied for that day. So even if you have forgotten to change your hour for your usage in the morning and you’ve already squeezed a bunch of usage in during that time, you still have the end of the day to update it.
Basically, whatever time you have selected when the clock turns midnight will be the hour you’ll receive free for the day just passed.
Sounds pretty straightforward, so there must be a catch right?
No catch, small print or anything like that!
By using more power in off peak times where it’s cheaper to purchase – it allows us to offer our customers the free hour each day.
It’s great for the country as well, as the less power used during those peak times, the less demand on the national electricity infrastructure. This means less chance of having to start back-up (often non-renewable) power plants to cope with this usage, and more chance of using renewable sources, such as hydro, geothermal and wind.
