Victorian Midday Power Saver: Is It Right for Your Home?

Victorian Midday Power Saver could make the washing, dishwashing or car charging you already do cheaper. It could also make a poor fit for a home that uses most of its electricity around dinner. The useful question is not how much free power is available. It is how your whole bill changes when you move onto the offer.

Quick answer

The Victorian Midday Power Saver starts on 1 October 2026. Eligible households can opt into an offer with free electricity usage from 11 am to 2 pm, capped at 24 kWh a day. Check the daily charge and paid time periods before switching: free midday usage does not guarantee a cheaper total bill.

Victorian Midday Power Saver: the rules to know

The Victorian Government’s program page, checked on 27 September 2026, sets out a daily free-use period of 11 am to 2 pm from 1 October 2026. The allowance is 24 kWh per day. Participation is optional, and a smart meter is required. Licensed retailers with at least 1,000 customers must offer it.

This is a Victorian arrangement. It is not interchangeable with the Solar Sharer Offer explained in our separate guide, which deals with a different electricity market framework. If you live outside Victoria, do not assume these times, caps or eligibility rules apply to you.

Before joining, request the complete tariff schedule for your distribution area. The free period is only one line of it. Write down the daily supply charge, every paid usage rate, the clock times attached to those rates and the treatment of any separate controlled-load circuit. Ask whether another offer available from the retailer is likely to suit you better.

First check: can your home actually use the window?

Picture an ordinary weekday rather than an ideal one. Are you at home? Can the dishwasher run after breakfast? Does your washing machine have a delay timer? Is an electric vehicle usually parked at work? A household can have large electricity bills without much load it can realistically move into three daytime hours.

Start with appliances you already use. Write down when each normally runs, whether it can be moved, and whether someone must be present. Do not include extra heating, cooling or washing you would only do because the electricity appears free. That changes the household’s behaviour as well as its tariff and can obscure the comparison.

Timers need to be suitable for the appliance. Follow manufacturer instructions, avoid overloaded powerboards, and do not arrange for several high-demand appliances to start together without considering circuit capacity. A cheap period is not a reason to bypass normal electrical or fire-safety precautions.

Build a whole-day comparison

Use interval data from your retailer, not just the total kWh printed on a quarterly bill. An annual total cannot tell you how much falls between 11 am and 2 pm. If you cannot access the data, ask the retailer for a comparison using your available consumption history and tell them which loads you could genuinely shift.

Run the calculation twice: once with your current routine, then with a modest load shift you could maintain. If the offer only works after a complete change in family habits, treat that as a warning. The best estimate is the one you are likely to live with, not the one a spreadsheet can make possible.

A small worked example

The following numbers are invented to show the method. They are not the regulated Victorian rates or a retailer quote. Suppose moving an existing 3 kWh of daily consumption into a free period avoids a 30 cent usage rate. That part of the change is worth 90 cents a day.

Now suppose the household pays an extra 8 cents for each of 7 kWh still used in paid periods, plus an extra 10 cents a day in supply charges. Those increases total 66 cents. The net difference is 24 cents a day, or $87.60 across 365 identical days. It is not $328.50 simply because 3 kWh became free.

Real life will not have 365 identical days. Summer cooling, winter heating, weekends and holidays change the mix. Repeat the exercise with a busier evening and a day when no laundry can be shifted. Use the electricity cost calculator for appliance arithmetic, then apply the actual time bands separately.

Solar homes have a different starting point

If rooftop solar already supplies the dishwasher at midday, shifting that cycle may not avoid a paid grid import. You may simply change how much of your own generation you consume and how much you export. That is why a calculation based on the appliance’s full energy use can overstate the saving.

Use the meter’s grid-import figures alongside inverter data. They answer different questions. The inverter shows generation; the electricity bill measures energy bought from or sold to the grid. A battery adds another choice about when to store and discharge energy, with usable capacity, efficiency and settings affecting the result.

Do not buy a battery solely on the assumption that a particular retail offer will remain unchanged for the life of the equipment. Compare the installation cost and a range of future tariffs. For the immediate switching decision, calculate what your existing system would do on the proposed offer.

Apartments, controlled load and account details

An apartment can have a smart meter but still sit within an embedded network. The government distinguishes customers who can choose a licensed retailer from customers supplied under exempt-selling arrangements. Ask the building manager who bills your electricity and ask that supplier whether this specific offer is available.

Controlled load is another reason to ask a precise question. An electric hot-water unit on a separately metered circuit should not simply be counted as ordinary household usage in the free window. Confirm its tariff and whether changing its operating schedule requires equipment or metering work.

Check that any concession on your account remains correctly recorded. Keep your customer number, current rate notice and a copy of the offer together. If another person manages the account, make sure the person consenting to the switch is authorised to do so.

Joining without losing track of the outcome

Request a written estimate and save its assumptions. Note the tariff commencement date, then compare actual use after the first complete billing period. Look for the free-window kWh, paid-period kWh, supply charge and any separate charges. A partial first bill is easy to misread because it may contain both old and new rates.

If the household is paying more, first check whether the predicted load shift happened. A timer may be set incorrectly, an appliance may be using a different circuit, or the original estimate may have relied on an unrealistic pattern. These checks are more useful than comparing only the bill’s dollar total with a different season.

The government says the offer has cooling-off protections and no exit fee for switching away. Keep enough information to compare another tariff if your circumstances change. A new job, a different school routine or a car that is no longer at home during the day can change the answer.

Your next step

Gather your interval data and compare two or three complete offers through Victorian Energy Compare. You can also start with CompareUs electricity comparisons, checking the available retailer panel and final offer terms. The decision should rest on your total expected bill and a routine you can maintain.

Sources and review

Checked by the CompareUs Editorial Team on 27 September 2026, before the scheduled launch. Program details come from the Victorian Government; address-specific comparison is available through Victorian Energy Compare. The arithmetic example is original, hypothetical and excludes changes in consumption between seasons. Confirm the final offer when joining.