Free electricity hours in Victoria

Some Victorian electricity plans price a window of the day — usually the middle of the day, when solar floods the grid — at zero. Power you use inside that window costs nothing. Everything outside it is charged at the plan’s normal rates, and those rates are usually higher than on plans without a free window. The free hours are funded by the rest of your day.

Most of these plans cap the free power: the first N kilowatt-hours each day are free, and anything past that is charged. A few publish no cap in their data at all.

A free window is an attribute of a plan, not a tariff type — a plan can charge one flat rate for the rest of the day and still be free inside the window. See time-of-use vs single rate for how the structures differ.

Only your usage can tell. It depends on how much of your power can move into the free window, and what you pay outside it. Nemity prices every free-window plan against your actual meter data, so you see the answer for your household, not the headline.

Upload your usage and start comparing plans →

136 plans across 21 retailers. Nemity shows only the plans available at your address.

† The retailer publishes no kWh cap for this window in the CDR feed. The plan may still apply one — check the plan terms before you switch. Nemity prices the window exactly as filed and flags the gap on the plan card.

‡ This is Victoria’s Midday Power Saver, a government scheme. The daily limit is set by the scheme rather than by the retailer, and this retailer has not published what they charge above it — it may be nothing, or up to their early-afternoon rate. Nemity prices the whole window as free, so a household that goes over the limit would pay more than we show. For most homes 24 kWh in three hours is far more than they would use.

When you upload your meter data, Nemity checks every half-hour of your usage against the plan’s window. Free-window energy is charged at zero up to the filed allowance; the allowance resets each day, and energy past it is charged at the plan’s normal rate. Your dishwasher, dryer, or EV charger sitting inside the window shows up as a real saving, because it is priced against your actual intervals.

That is also why two households on the same free-window plan can get very different bills: what matters is how much of your usage lands inside the window, not the headline.

Compare free-window plans on your own usage →

Households that can shift usage into the window: EV charging at midday, dishwashers and dryers on delay timers, hot water systems (some free-window plans exist in a controlled-load version for exactly this). If nobody is home during the day and nothing can be delayed, the window pays far less.

EV charging and electricity plans covers this in more detail, and the comparison tool can simulate moving some of your usage into the free window so you can see the difference before you switch.

The table above is generated from the same weekly snapshot the comparison tool runs on: the official AER Consumer Data Right (CDR) feed, the source that also powers Victorian Energy Compare. Nothing here is typed in by hand. When a retailer changes its window or its cap, this page changes with the next refresh.

Rates change, and a retailer can re-file at any time. The figures on this page are exactly as current as the date at the top of it, and no more — the comparison itself always loads the latest plan data, so a figure there can be newer than one here. Confirm with the retailer before you switch.

Not sure which zone you are in? Find your distributor and check the zone page for your area.