A new report recently published by the Brotherhood of St Laurence (BSL), confirms that energy stress is widespread, with one in five Australian households experiencing some form of energy stress. Energy stress refers to the struggle to afford the energy required for adequate health, wellbeing, and social and economic participation.
The report, Power Pain: An Investigation of energy stress in Australia, draws on data from Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA). Worryingly, it found that 18–23% of households in Australia have experienced at least one form of energy stress over the period 2006 to 2020.
Executive Director of BSL, Travers McLeod, noted that the report’s findings were especially timely: ‘With power bills soaring, cost of living pressures rising, and many households yet to receive winter power bills, the problem of energy stress demands attention.’
The report covers important aspects of the issue such as addressing existing energy policy, ensuring the benefits of energy transition to low-carbon energy sources are available to households most at risk, and also that those experiencing energy stress should have opportunities for greater energy efficiencies in the home.
The report also points out that energy stress is likely to be exacerbated by households paying unnecessarily high prices in retail energy markets (Colmar Brunton 2018; Azpitarte, Johnson & Sullivan 2015).
This is especially true if you haven’t checked your electricity plan against the market for some time. Just like insurance, unless you shop around, it’s likely you’ll be paying more for your electricity than you need to. It’s unfortunate but true that if you don’t check with your retailer and with the wider market regularly, chances are you are paying more than you need for the electricity you are using.
Checking for a competitive electricity price
Whilst residential energy offers can be complex and difficult to compare, there is a new service available in the market that will do the hard work to check the market, compare all retailers and find savings wherever possible.
- Joulius compares all retailers, and all Generally Available plans of the same tariff type as your current plan, to find you the best savings we can.
- All that’s needed is a recent bill in electronic pdf format to get started; it takes less than 5 minutes and its completely free to use.
Not only will Joulius compare electricity plans for you now; we’ll keep on top of the market for you and will send you alerts when the market changes and we can find you savings. Just send in a bill every so often so we can keep our calculations up to date.
When you do check your electricity rates, make sure you use a service that compares all publicly available plans from all retailers – not just a select few offers from a panel of retailers.
Joulius’ free mobile app provides such a service by offering members an unbiased and personalised review of the best plans in the market for them. By signing up to the free mobile app, you’ll have access to a personalised ranking so you can always have the best chance of finding savings. You can switch as frequently as you choose and its always free.
