Frequently asked questions

It depends on when you use power, and no average can answer it for you. Time-of-use plans charge less overnight and more in the late afternoon and evening, so they suit households whose usage avoids peak — overnight EV charging, late-evening appliances, solar self-consumption at midday. Nemity prices both structures against your actual half-hourly usage, so the ranking shows which side you fall on instead of guessing. Time-of-use vs single rate explained

It depends on your usage pattern, and the answer surprises people. Free-window plans often charge more for power outside the window, so the plan only wins when enough of your usage lands inside it — or can be moved into it. Households home at midday, or with delay-timer appliances and EVs, can do well. Solar households can do worse: in summer the panels, not the grid, cover the midday window, while the dearer outside-window rates apply to everything else. Winter can flip that. The only way to know is your own interval data — Nemity prices every free-window plan against your actual half-hours, caps and all. Current free-window plans Time-of-use vs single rate

Your distributor — the company that owns the poles, wires, and meter at your address — is printed on your electricity bill, usually near the NMI. It is not the same company that sends the bill (your retailer). You can also check by entering your postcode in Nemity: it maps postcodes to the five Victorian distribution zones. Check your postcode in Nemity Distributor vs retailer, explained

Many Victorian plans apply their headline rates or discounts for a set benefit period. When it ends, the discount can drop off and the plan gets dearer — which is why Victorian households tend to re-compare regularly rather than stay put. Nemity prices plans for exactly the period you intend to be on them, including sign-up credits, so a plan that only looks cheap for three months reads as exactly that. Compare plans for your next period

There isn’t one any more. Victoria scrapped its minimum feed-in tariff on 1 July 2025, so retailers now set their own rate and the only limit is that it cannot be below zero. The lowest non-zero all-day feed-in rate on any Victorian electricity plan is 0.04c/kWh as at 16 October 2026, and some plans pay nothing at all. Some pay a higher rate only in certain hours or up to a daily cap. Nemity applies each plan’s actual feed-in rates to your real export intervals when it ranks plans. Current Victorian feed-in rates by plan Glossary: feed-in tariff

Yes. Nemity can build an estimated usage profile from your household details. But the meter-data comparison is the accurate one: it prices every plan against your actual half-hourly usage, seasons included. The file is free to download and takes about 5 minutes to set up. How to get your meter data

Yes. Nemity is completely free to use.

No. Your meter data is read in your browser and never leaves your device. Nothing from your file — no interval data, no meter readings, no NMI — is uploaded anywhere.

You download it from your distributor's online portal — the company that owns the poles, wires, and meter (not your retailer, who only sends the bill). The process takes about 5 minutes to set up once, and 30 seconds to download after that. Step-by-step instructions for all five Victorian distributors.

Nemity includes every Victorian electricity plan in the AER CDR feed, including single-rate, time-of-use, controlled-load, and solar plans. The Victorian Default Offer (the ESC-regulated benchmark) is included for all five zones. Demand-tariff plans are left out. No Victorian distributor assigns a residential demand network tariff any more, so a household cannot be put on one — and priced against real household usage, none of them wins. Victorian Energy Compare may still list them. A few retailers do not publish to the CDR feed at all, so we cannot price them: Discover Energy and Tesla Energy (Powerwall owners only). Check their own websites for their prices.

Both can price plans against your real meter data — Victorian Energy Compare, the Victorian Government's tool, does that too. The differences are in what you can ask. Nemity prices any window you choose: a single season, the next 3 or 6 months, or the full year, where VEC gives one annual total. Nemity ranks every plan against your current plan, so you see in dollars what switching would save. And its home-upgrade simulation estimates what every plan would cost with solar, an EV or a battery before you buy. VEC may also list demand-tariff plans, which Nemity leaves out: no Victorian distributor puts a household on one any more. How cost is calculated

Yes. Solar feed-in tariffs are included in the cost calculation. Plans with a higher feed-in rate will show a lower net cost for households that export to the grid. The feed-in calculation uses your actual half-hourly export intervals, not a rough estimate. Victorian feed-in rates by plan

Victoria has five electricity distribution zones: CitiPower (inner Melbourne), Powercor (western Victoria), AusNet (northern and eastern Victoria), Jemena (north-west Melbourne), and United Energy (south-east Melbourne). The zone determines which plans are available at your address — some retailer offers are only available in certain zones. Nemity shows only the plans available at your address. Free electricity hours by zone

Plan data is refreshed weekly from the official AER Consumer Data Right (CDR) feed — the same authoritative source that powers Victorian Energy Compare. The data date is shown at the bottom of the home page.

Nemity reads NEM12 files (.csv, .dat, or .txt) from all five Victorian distributors — CitiPower, Powercor, AusNet, Jemena, and United Energy. It also reads the half-hourly usage exports from AGL My Account, Origin and Jemena My Portal, and some other formats — if you are not sure about yours, upload it and Nemity will tell you what it found. For gas there is no file at all: you type the summer and winter usage off two bills.

The Victorian Default Offer (VDO) is a regulated electricity price set by the Essential Services Commission (ESC). It acts as a safety-net price for households that have not actively chosen a market offer. Nemity includes VDO plans in its comparison for all five zones. More about the VDO.

Yes. Nemity ranks every Victorian gas plan in the CDR feed across all three gas networks — Australian Gas Networks, AusNet Gas, and Multinet. Gas needs no meter file: you enter the megajoules from a summer bill and a winter bill, and Nemity spreads that across the year the way Victorian gas is really used, because a winter gas bill can be several times a summer one. You can rank gas on its own, or rank electricity and gas together to see what putting both with one retailer would cost. Compare gas plans

There is no single answer, and any site that gives you one is guessing at your household. The cheapest plan depends on how much power you use, when you use it, which distribution zone your address sits in, and whether you have solar. A plan with the lowest advertised rate can easily cost more than one with a higher rate but a much lower daily supply charge. Nemity answers it properly by pricing every plan against your own half-hourly usage and ranking by the total — which is a different ranking for almost every household. Rank plans on your own usage What Victorian plans charge per day and per kWh

It differs by distribution zone, and it moves whenever a retailer re-files its rates — so rather than name a plan here, where the answer would quietly go out of date, Nemity works it out from the plan data and shows which snapshot it read. Worth knowing before you go looking: the plan with the lowest daily supply charge is usually not the plan with the lowest usage rate, because a low standing charge suits a small household with little usage to spread it over and a low usage rate suits a big one. Neither is simply the cheapest. The lowest supply charge in each zone, updated weekly

The Power Saving Bonus is a Victorian Government payment, not something Nemity administers or pays. It has run in rounds that open and close, so the only reliable place to check whether one is open, and what it is worth, is energy.vic.gov.au. Check there first, and claim it if you can — the whole point of Nemity is to leave you with more money, so we would rather you had the bonus and the cheaper plan than either one alone. Using Nemity does not affect your eligibility, and if a round requires you to compare on a particular government site, do that as well: it costs you one extra comparison and can be worth hundreds.

Email us at hello@nemity.com.au. If something looks wrong, we want to hear about it. Feedback like this makes the tool more accurate for everyone.

Email us at hello@nemity.com.au. If your question is about an inaccuracy in the data or the calculation, we especially want to hear about it.