Take control of your energy bills with Powerpal

Break down your household’s electricity usage and find out where inefficiencies are with Powerpal.

Ever wondered how much money your kettle is costing you? What about your washing machine? Or your dishwasher? Well, with a Powerpal energy monitor, you can actually find out.

Powerpal is an energy monitor that’s attached to your smart meter, and it provides real-time access to your energy consumption via an easy-to-use app. It works kind of like a step-tracking Fitbit - but for your electricity.

Once you download the Powerpal app, you can see exactly what each appliance is costing you to run, so you can cut back on usage or replace the appliances that are working inefficiently - and causing you some serious bill grief.

But why not get a little deeper?

Just like there’s peak-hour traffic to and from work...electricity generally has a peak usage and off-peak usage. Peak times are usually in the morning between 6 and 9am, and at night between 7 and 11pm. The good news is, Powerpal can help you identify which appliances are better to run during off-peak times, and vice versa.

And if you have solar panels, Powerpal helps you work out when is the best time to use occasional appliances like a washing machine or dishwasher to get the most out of your solar power generation.

It tracks the times your home has spare solar energy available so all you need to do is look for the flat spot in the middle of the day that shows when less energy was required from the grid to power your home. Then, you can match your appliance usage to when your spare solar power is available.

Powerpal customer Harshana Hettiarachchi works in tech, and lives with his wife and two children in Victoria. To him, Powerpal is an awesome gadget that helps break down his household’s electricity use, and it’s a great learning tool for the kids too.

“The bar graph that works on a 24-hour basis is a really good visual representation to show to my kids the peaks and troughs of power usage,” he said.

As part of the Victorian Government’s Energy Upgrades program, Powerpal is free for eligible Victorian residents, and compatible with all digital electricity metres - as long as you don’t live in an apartment.

If you don’t already have a digital electricity metre, you can call your energy retailer and ask for an upgrade! If you don’t live in Victoria, you can still purchase a Powerpal energy monitor.

It can also help users reduce their energy use, and save up to 15 per cent on their energy bills each year.

For Harshana, reducing his emissions and helping the environment is a great perk of using Powerpal.

“We’re not environmentalists, but we care about the environment and where it’s going and leaving it in a better place for future generations,” he said.

To date, Powerpal has helped users save a combined $7,340,192 on their bills and over 22,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

It’s so easy to get a Powerpal energy monitor installed, all you need to do is register on the Powerpal website and within a few weeks a specialist installer will be out and install the device. The whole process takes less than 10 minutes and is completely free.

Just have a recent electricity bill handy, downloaded the app, and the installer will set up the app for you with current rates so you can view your energy consumption immediately.

Then, after learning your usage over the first few weeks, the Solar Simulator becomes available in the Powerpal app to help you consider the benefits of solar. It can tell you how much different sized solar systems could save you over the next 10 years, and how much they cost to install, making any decision to invest a lot easier.

Claim your FREE Powerpal smart energy monitor in Victoria today.