Save up to $2,000 a year on power: how to actually benefit from free power hours

From 1 July 2026, the Federal Government’s new Solar Sharer Offer requires every major electricity retailer in NSW, SE QLD and SA to offer customers at least three free hours of power per day. For a Brisbane household willing to engineer their house around the free window, this can mean savings of $600 to $2,000 a year on electricity bills.

What doesn’t shift: if you can move enough of your daily electricity use into the free window, you come out ahead. If you can’t, the higher base rates eat the supposed savings and you’re worse off than a flat-rate plan.

This post is the playbook. Specifically, how to retrofit a Brisbane or SEQ home so the 3 hours of free electricity each day actually shift a meaningful chunk of your annual consumption. Some of it is free to do. Some of it is a small electrical job. Some of it is a bigger investment that pays back fast.

We install this kind of work every week, so the recommendations below are ranked roughly by return on investment, not by what sounds impressive.

Your savings playbook (do these in order)

1. Generate your own daytime power. Solar panels first — the free window is the middle of the day, exactly when your roof is generating. Don’t pay for grid electricity if your panels could be supplying the same load for nothing.
2. Store the excess in a battery. Use solar surplus after 4pm when grid pricing peaks. Top up from the grid during the free window if solar happens to be underperforming.
3. Shift your biggest loads into the free window. Hot water, EV charging, pool pump — these are the loads big enough to move the needle.
4. Shift smaller loads with delay timers. Dishwasher, washing machine, dryer. Free to do, modest savings.
5. Automate everything with a smart controller. No more manually managing timers each day.

Households vary widely. A basic home with electric hot water and standard appliances might capture 6 to 8 kWh per day in the free window, saving around $600 to $900 per year. A loaded household with an EV, pool pump, and electric hot water can capture 18 to 22 kWh per day, saving closer to $2,000 per year — figures as at May 2026 and dependent on your specific plan, usage pattern, and roof size.

Hot water timer — save $300–$600/year

Your hot water heater is probably the single biggest electricity user in your house — 30 to 40% of your bill goes into heating that tank. We can rewire it so it only heats during the free hours each day. Here’s what’s involved:

a) An electrician adds a small timer to your switchboard (the box with all your circuit breakers in it). Usually about a half-day job.

b) The timer is set to turn your hot water on at the start of the free window each day — typically somewhere between 10am and 2pm depending on your retailer’s plan — and off again at the end.

c) Your hot water then heats only during those free hours. Most days that’s enough for a full tank. On heavy-use days (a lot of laundry, big family showers) the tank may need a top-up run.

What it costs, what you save

The install is typically $250–$450 depending on what your switchboard looks like. Most households save $300–$500 a year afterwards — so the work pays for itself in well under a year.

Will this work for my house?

• Yes — if you have a standard electric storage hot water tank (the big cylinder in the laundry or outside).
• Yes — if you have a heat pump hot water system that supports scheduling. Even better: heat pumps draw less power over a longer time, which suits the free window perfectly.
• No — if you have a gas hot water system. There’s no electricity load to shift.
• One thing to note — if you’re currently on Queensland’s Tariff 33 (an older plan that runs your hot water on a separate circuit, being phased out by Energex on 30 June 2026), we’ll talk you through what that means at the time of quote.

Book a hot water timer install

Battery scheduling — add $1,150–$1,640/year on top of solar

A battery turns the free hours into evening savings. We charge it from the grid for nothing during the free window each day, then your home runs off that stored cheap power through the expensive 4pm–9pm peak instead of paying full grid rates.

Here’s how the setup works depending on what battery you have (or are looking at):

a) If you’re buying a new battery now, modern systems like the SigEnergy SigenStor and the GoodWe ESA have scheduling built into their app. You set the free window once and the system handles charging and discharging automatically. No extra hardware, no extra cost.

b) If you already have a Tesla Powerwall, the Tesla app supports the same kind of scheduling out of the box. Set your retailer’s free window in the app and you’re done.

c) If you have an older battery without scheduling, we can add a smart controller (Reposit Power or Catch Power) that sits between the battery and your loads. This typically adds $500 to $1,500 to the system cost, plus install. Works with most brands.

The federal battery rebate makes this cheaper than ever. Since 1 May 2026, the Federal Government’s Cheaper Home Batteries Program has been giving the full rebate (roughly $252 per usable kWh) on batteries up to 14 kWh, with reduced rebates above that. So a 10 to 13 kWh battery is in the sweet spot — the full rebate, no diminished returns.

A well-sized battery on this scheme typically pays for itself in 6 to 9 years. Add free-hours scheduling on top and that shortens to 5 to 7 years for households making the most of all three energy sources: rooftop solar, free grid hours, and stored battery discharge through peak.

Book a battery storage assessment

EV charging windows — save $400–$900/year

Charging your car during the free hours is essentially free fuel. Even a basic setup covers most days’ driving for nothing — the bigger your charger, the more range you can put on the car in 3 hours.

Here’s what each setup gets you in a 3-hour free window:

a) Standard wall plug (the 10-amp power point most homes already have) delivers about 7 kWh of charge — roughly 30 to 35 km of EV range. Fine for short commutes; slow for anything longer.

b) A dedicated 7 kW wall charger (brands like Zappi, Wallbox, Tesla Wall Connector or Fronius Wattpilot) delivers about 22 kWh — roughly 100 to 110 km of range per session. This is the sweet spot for most Brisbane EV households: 3 hours of free electricity covers most daily driving for nothing.

c) A three-phase 22 kW charger delivers about 66 kWh — enough to take a long-range EV from near-empty to near-full in a single free window. Only works if your home has three-phase power; most don’t.

Setting it up is simple. Every modern EV charger supports scheduled charging, and so do most EVs themselves — Tesla, BYD, Hyundai, Kia, Polestar all let you set the charge window from the car’s own app. Once it’s set, you don’t have to think about it.

For a typical EV household charging 50 to 80 km daily, switching to free-hours charging saves around $400 to $700 a year versus standard rates.

Book an EV charger quote

Pool pumps — save $500–$900/year

Pool pumps are a quiet budget killer in Brisbane households. They run for 6 to 10 hours a day, use a lot of electricity, and often default to running at night when grid power is most expensive.

The fix is simple — schedule the pump to run during the free hours instead.

a) A basic timer or smart switch on the pump circuit does the job. Cheap to install.

b) Run the pump during the free window first. If it needs more than 3 hours a day, run the rest during your solar generation hours when grid imports cost you nothing anyway.

c) Consider a variable-speed pool pump if you’re replacing yours. They use about half the electricity of a fixed-speed pump and often pay back in 2 to 4 years on their own. Pair one with free-window scheduling and the savings compound.

A typical Brisbane single-speed pool pump uses 3,000 to 4,500 kWh a year — roughly $700 to $1,100 in electricity if it’s all running on standard rates. Shift half into the free hours and the other half into your solar window and that can come down close to nothing.

Delay-start appliances — save $50–$200/year

This is the free win. Almost every modern dishwasher, washing machine and dryer has a delay-start function built in. Set the cycle to start at the beginning of your free window, walk away. Done.

Power used per cycle (your bill measures this in kWh):

• Dishwasher: 1.2 to 1.8 kWh
• Washing machine: 0.5 to 1.5 kWh (cold wash is at the low end)
• Heat-pump or condenser dryer: 1.5 to 3 kWh
• Vented electric dryer: 3 to 4.5 kWh — worth replacing on energy grounds alone

For a household running these appliances 3 to 5 times a week, scheduling them into the free window saves $50 to $200 a year. Not life-changing on its own, but it stacks with everything else.

Whole-house orchestration — automates the lot, pays back in 3 to 5 years

If you don’t want to manage timers for hot water, pool pump, EV charger and a battery individually, a smart controller does it for you automatically. It watches your solar generation, your loads, your battery charge level and your electricity prices, then makes decisions about when to run what — without you having to think about it.

Two main options:

a) Catch Power Solar Relay sits inside your switchboard and automatically directs surplus solar to specific loads (typically hot water and pool pump) before exporting to the grid. Pair it with a basic free-window timer and you’ve got a near-automated setup. Installed cost typically $800 to $1,650 depending on whether a new circuit is required.

b) Reposit Power is the more advanced option — it watches your battery, your solar, your loads, and your retailer’s time-of-use rates, then makes real-time decisions about when to charge, discharge or shift loads. Especially good if you’re on a wholesale-linked plan like Amber where prices change throughout the day. Installed cost typically $1,000 to $1,500.

For a typical Brisbane household with solar, battery, EV, hot water and a pool, a whole-house orchestration setup pays for itself in 3 to 5 years through avoided grid imports and better battery cycling.

Book a system review

A worked example

Consider a Brisbane four-person household with solar already installed, an electric storage hot water system, one EV doing about 50 km daily, and a pool with a single-speed pump.

Annual electricity use: roughly 10,500 kWh (about 29 kWh per day). This is fairly typical of a SEQ household that’s added an EV and runs a pool — well above the 4,600 kWh baseline that the Australian Energy Regulator uses for basic homes without those loads.

Current bill on a flat-rate plan: roughly $3,200 per year (figures as at May 2026).

After switching to a free-hours plan and shifting the largest loads into the free window:

• Hot water shifted to free window: about 5 kWh per day = $545 saved a year
• EV charging in free window: about 8 kWh per day = $875 saved a year
• Pool pump in free window: about 6 kWh per day = $655 saved a year
• Delay-start appliances: about 1.5 kWh per day = $165 saved a year

That’s 20.5 kWh per day shifted into the free window, leaving about 8.5 kWh per day still on paid rates — overnight base loads (fridge, standby power), mornings before solar kicks in, and the early evening peak after the free window closes.

Free-hours plans typically come with slightly higher base rates on those remaining hours — about 5 cents per kWh extra, costing roughly $155 more per year.

Net annual saving on this profile: roughly $2,000 a year (figures as at May 2026 and subject to plan changes).

Initial setup costs are around $1,500 to $3,000 (hot water timer, possibly a dedicated EV wall charger, possibly a smart controller). For a household on this profile, that pays back in under 18 months — often under 12 months if you already have an EV charger installed.

When not to bother

Free power hours plans don’t suit every household. The plan structure rewards households with shiftable loads — hot water, EV, pool, appliances that can run on a delay. If you genuinely can’t shift load into the free window, the higher base rates of these plans will leave you worse off than a flat-rate plan.

Specific situations where free hours plans are usually the wrong choice:

• Rental properties where you can’t modify the switchboard or appliances
• Households with gas hot water and no EV or pool
• Households with very low overall electricity use (under 3,000 kWh/year)
• Off-peak controlled-load tariffs that are already cheaper than the free-hours plan’s paid-window rate

Run the maths against your actual usage pattern before switching. If you can shift 6 kWh per day or more into the free window with reasonable effort, you’ll come out ahead. If you can only shift 2 to 3 kWh, you probably won’t.

Frequently asked questions

How much can I realistically save with free power hours plans?

It depends heavily on what loads you can shift. A basic Brisbane household with electric hot water and shiftable appliances saves around $600 to $900 per year. A loaded household optimising hot water plus EV charging plus pool pump can save closer to $2,000 per year — figures as at May 2026. Households that can’t shift any meaningful load will see no saving and may pay more because of the higher base rates that come with free-hours plans.

What’s the highest-ROI single change for free power hours?

Adding a timer to your electric hot water system. Cost is typically $250 to $450 installed; annual savings are usually $300 to $500. Payback under six to twelve months for most households.

Does my existing battery work with free power hours?

Most modern batteries support scheduled charging from the grid. Tesla Powerwall, SigEnergy SigenStor, and GoodWe ESA all have time-of-use scheduling built into their apps. Older batteries may need an add-on controller like Reposit or Catch Power.

Can I charge an EV at home during free hours?

Yes. Every modern EV and EV charger supports scheduled charging. A 7 kW dedicated wall charger gives you about 22 kWh in 3 hours, which covers most daily driving for free.

Are free power hours plans actually free during the free window?

Yes during the specified window, but the trade-off is usually higher base rates and lower solar feed-in tariffs during the rest of the day. Whether the trade-off is worth it depends entirely on how much load you can shift into the free window. We cover the financial structure in detail in our companion post on free power hours plans and the credit card trap.

What to do next

If you’re already on a free-hours plan and want to optimise your house around it, the highest-ROI starting point is a hot water timer install. We can quote this in a 15-minute visit and have it installed within a week.

If you’re considering switching plans, the right order is: solar first, battery second, hot water timer third, EV charger fourth. We can quote any combination of these as a single integrated package, which is usually 10 to 15 percent cheaper than the same equipment installed across separate jobs.

Book a free site assessment and we’ll work out which combination makes sense for your household. We don’t recommend equipment you don’t need.