Home Battery 12 Months Later | My Real Power Bill Results

[00:00:00]Today, I've got a video that I've promised you for a long time. We're finally going to compare a Synergy bill with a home battery against 12 months ago, the same season of a Synergy bill without a battery. And we're going to do it across two homes. Luckily, my parents have installed the same system as I did at my home. So, we get to see what two people who are generally just working, you know, [music] come home in the evening, use your battery power during the evening where there's no solar, >> [music] >> and then they're not there during the day apart from weekends. So, we get to see what that looks like, how they compare, and then we're going to see my Synergy bill, which is, you know, four people in a home, two kids, two adults, a dog who, well, doesn't use that much power, but we do have an electric car, we do also use the air con to make sure the kids are, you know, feeling well and sleeping through the night. So, we're going to see how those two compare, what the real-world savings are, because there's a lot of marketing fluff out there. You can do a lot of math, but what does it actually look like a real bill versus the same one 12 months ago.

[00:01:04]So, join me, make sure you like and subscribe, and let's get rolling with the intro.

[00:01:12]>> [music] >> So, we're going to start with my bill from 2025. So, really, this bill was $562, [music] and that's the 8th of April 2025. So, we're now in May, so I'm going to get the May-April bill for what it is now a year later. So, if we scroll down, my daily usage is about 30.2 units uh per day, so the cost of $9.22 Australian cents. And I think that's quite a lot, to be honest. And that means we use air con for the kids, uh >> [music] >> we use power, we were charging the car back then also, and I run about two servers plus my open claw server.

[00:01:53]They're not using that much, but all together, it's a couple of kilowatts that goes straight through the night, straight through the day, on top of your general usage, which could be, let's say, a air con that blasts full-time.

[00:02:04]That's 6 kilowatts right there. So, look, we were using a lot of power, and we still are. If there is one thing that modern tech has taught us, it is that your phone will die at the exact worst possible time. Boarding a long flight?

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[00:02:51]There is even a built-in [music] USB-C cable that doubles as a carry strap, which is clever. Then, there is the Ugreen Nexode Pro 65 W GaN charger with two USB-C ports and one USB-A port, and enough power to charge up to three devices at once. [music] And finally, the Ugreen Find Tracker 2 trackers, which work with Apple Find My. It has a loud 110-dB speaker, IP68 dust and weather resistance, and a long-life battery, so you can put it on your keys, bags, and anything you consistently lose and then blame everyone else for it. So, the Urban Pro Set is basically Ugreen's daily power stack. You've got your power bank for your phone, the GaN charger for your desk and travel back, and trackers for the gear you should not lose, but absolutely will. So, check out the Ugreen Urban Pro Set using the link in the [music] description below, and huge thanks to Ugreen for sponsoring this video. I had solar, and I think most of Australians do have solar, which means that your savings are going to be on top of solar and [music] because I think Australia has a largest penetration of rooftop solar, I think it's a given that most people will have solar when they install a battery. And then we have that credit of of $23.92 for that 2-month period. Remember that these units as in the prices have gotten smaller. It used to be like nearly 30, 40 cents back in the day when you first you got your solar installed, but now it's well, it's really crap. 2 cents and 10 cents on on peak. So, having solar is not about the rebate, about the usage these days. But I'm on the EV add-on plan for Synergy, so I get peak, off-peak, super off-peak and overnight charges. And that means that my peak, 3:00 p.m. to your 10:00 or 9:00 p.m. I think it is, that charge is 53 cents or 54 cents. It's high. And that means that when I didn't have a battery, just so I could have cheap charging for the car during the day, when I was using my home power, my dryer, my washing machine, my dishwasher, all those were stupidly expensive during that time. And you were cooking, you were at home, you had the lights on. You needed the lights. That period cost me a lot. So, if we look at that breakdown, peak charges were $255 for this period.

[00:05:06]That was between 3:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.

[00:05:09]Then off-peak 83, overnight was 59 and super off-peak was 43. Our super off-peak was kind of just the car. The one thing >> [music] >> that you can see here is that I was paying a lot more just being on the EV plan just so I could every couple of days charge the car for 8 cents. It was worth it. So, look, we also have the supply charge. I want to keep moving through this quickly cuz we're going to compare this in a second. The supply charge here for 61 days is $70. You cannot get away from that in metropolitan Australia, not just WA. You will have to pay that. So, the minimum charge is about 75 because you've also got the actual tax on top. So, that is your minimum charge per two months that you can get down to with a battery. So, we're all aiming just to reduce that bill to $75.

[00:05:59]And if we go 75 * 6, that's $450 per year in power connection or supply charge, which enables you to use some power if your battery ever runs out. Let's have a look how much my power bill is this period or May, so April May. This is my bill, $161.12 as of May. I know April May there's a bit of difference, but it's pretty close, right? 161, and let's have a look at my daily usage. 10 units a day, so that's three times smaller, right?

[00:06:34]From 30 to 10, and my average cost per day was $2.56 compared to $9. Insane, insane difference, right? But really where it comes down to is this section right here, which is this EV add-on plan. That peak charge was $255.

[00:06:50]Now, it is $5.89.

[00:06:54]And really the only time that happened was when the battery ran out by the time 9:00 was, and I still had the air con running, because it was a hot evening and you just couldn't be outside. Even in that 3:00 p.m. to like, you know, 7:00 p.m. is just hot. So, you got the air con running, keeping the house cool, and that's where that $5 comes from, because I would never charge the car during that time. Then you've got your off-peak, overnight, and super off-peak.

[00:07:18]So, super off-peak is car charging.

[00:07:20]During the day, my solar can generate around 5 to 12 kW of energy per hour, and that varies depending on how far the sun is, and of course it's not sustained. So, if I want to charge the car with a fast charger at 12 kW, I'm going to be pulling some power from the grid, and And is what these super off-peak charges are. My overnight charge and off peak charge is again that same amount of time that I'm using the air con through the night and the battery runs out. Air cons are using like 5 kilowatts an hour to usually that tail end that 6:00 a.m. would be completely empty and you'd be using supply. So overall my bill is reduced significantly couple of hundred dollars and this has been pretty much the charge every two months so far. I got 140 the previous one but 160 is probably on the higher end but it's a good example from 12 months ago. Now a really important caveat, this is not a perfect science lab comparison. It is a real world home comparison. I'm trying to isolate the battery impact [music] as fairly as possible. And before I had the battery my annual electricity bills were around $3,016 and that works out to be roughly $251 per month but there were some months where it was a thousand and somewhere there was about 350. And as the family grew the bills grew. [music] So after installing the battery my home electricity cost dropped to around 720 per year or roughly $60 per month. Now there are two caveats here. First, every month I still pay around $37 in fixed electricity supply charges. That charge does not go away just because you have a battery. Second, I also spend a roughly $40 per month charging the EV but I am excluding the car from this comparison well, not everyone has an EV but most people are sort of getting a home battery and this is normal home usage not the cost of running a car. So the way I'm treating this is this. The fixed supply charge and the excluded EV charging cost roughly offset each other.

[00:09:26]It's not a perfectly exact way of doing it but it keeps the comparison focused on the house itself. So with the caveat out of the way the annual electricity savings is simple. Before the battery $3,016 after the battery, 720, which is around $2,296 per year in savings [music] and 191 per month. But, I also have a battery loan repayment of about $83 per month. It's interest-free from the WA government.

[00:09:50]So, the real monthly cash flow saving after the loan is not 191, it is [music] closer to 108 per month. That is calculated as my old monthly cost of 251 minus the new home electricity cost of 60 minus the battery loan of 83. So, net net, I am ahead about $108 per month while the loan is active. Now, I paid about 3,400 up front and if I divide that by the net monthly savings of 108, that up front cash is recovered in roughly 31 months or 2.6 years. Now, forgetting about the actual interest-free loan, the full system cost, I'm going with 13,400 here, divided that by the annual electricity savings of 2,296, and the full system pays itself [music] back in roughly 5.8 years whether I have a loan or not. Lastly, this is all calculated based on the premise that the energy prices will stay roughly the same. But, that that's me, I'm still charging the car and if I wasn't charging the car, which actually in the next couple of months might reduce because I'm using a special charger that uses only the solar energy, that's going to be a little bit different because it only charges as much solar power as you have. You charge more often, but it doesn't use your actual supply.

[00:11:07]So, let's have a look at a second bill, which is my parents' bill. This is their power bill from March 2025. So, it's 489 Australian dollars. Now, this is on the lower end. I had a look at some of their other bills, they are going up to 600 800 dollars. I wanted to take something more reasonable, but it also made sense to be 12 months difference, right? A year difference. So, it's a little bit lower. There are only two people in the house. They work Monday to Friday. So, they're only home in the evenings. They don't have an EV, but they do have water that is via electricity. They do have an oven that is electrical and a stove top that is also electric. So, there's no gas at the home. So, if we look at their actual spend, not a lot of pages on this. They also have solar, by the way.

[00:11:53]So, do have a little bit of a credit there. And because they're not home during the day, they're not using that solar. It's going straight to credit.

[00:11:59]Their consumption there was 1,300 units and that's $381 plus the supply charge and that's where they get to. So, really ultimately, the only amount they can save is that $381.

[00:12:10]They spend $7.90 per day and their average [music] usage is 29 units. Now, I should probably add that they we each have 25 kWh battery.

[00:12:21]So, what you can see here is they're not using that much less than me when I have the EV connected. So, 30 and I got $9 on that one. So, this is best example for two people at a house working using everything in the evening. So, let's have a look at a year later what their bill looks like. $79.95 is the bill for can see here that their average daily usage is 0.39 units. Again, that's a person leaves in the morning, comes back in the afternoon, and then uses their home equipment, which is pure electricity, from the moment the sun starts going down into the night. So, a solar battery is most valuable to those people because the time you're using the power from your home is not when you're home. So, not when you have your solar blasting through into your house. That's going to that 2 cents, 10 cents during peak.

[00:13:14]Instead, their average daily cost ends up being a dollar and 29 cents per day.

[00:13:20]Same setup, same inverter, same cost.

[00:13:24]They are literally paying zero for their usage. Now, there was a couple of days here that they used it because from my understanding there was again a couple of hot days where they ran the air con through into the night. And one thing to really add to that, this will change in the next bill because they recently purchased a small air con that goes into one room like a 1.5 2 kW air con and my dad said he has not seen the battery go below 40% and most days it sits around that 60 to 70%. That means they got way more kilowatt hour battery than they actually needed.

[00:14:02]But that's my recommendation for more most people is get more than you need now so that when you're you know, in the future you grow, maybe you have kids, you can utilize that with with the rebates that are still available through the government. So, their only charge here really is that $65 for obviously day charge and connection fee supply charge, but they paid $7.27 over the course of 60 days for power from the grid. I think this kind of just shows how you can really really offset your power usage to almost zero with that substantial outlay, right?

[00:14:41]Even if the battery, let's say it's only 20 kW or 15 kW hours, will still save you a huge amount during that really high usage period after the sun goes down and into that evening. Not night time usage cuz that's you're not you're not awake. You've maybe got the heater on if it's cold or maybe the air con, but that period where you're using all your equipment, using all your appliances, that is the highest cost. As you could see from mine is $255 when it's at that 50 cent per kilowatt charge. Friends, thank you very much for watching this long ass summary, 20 minutes. Holy gosh. I don't know if it's 20 minutes. I'm going to cut out a few bits, but friends, thank you very much for watching. Let me know your thoughts below.

[00:15:24]Uh if there is anything that you've experienced or you've saved more, please let me know there. Catch you all next one. Bye.

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