Any there any REAL cost savings to be from made from switching to the Aurora (Tasmania) Time-Of-Use Tariff 93 and/or installing solar panels and/or replacing your hot water cylinder when it stops working?

Executive Summary: DEFINITELY MOSTLY YES

And as a bonus, my gut feeling is the more electricity and hot water you use (& waste), the more savings you can make on your power bill.

In our household these savings come from four main areas:

• switching from Aurora’s tariffs 31/41 (light, power/ heat, water) to tariff 93 (Time-Of-Use)
• adding solar panels
• using a heat pump hot water system rather than a conventional resistive element heated hot water cylinder
• using a modern heat pump split system (AKA air conditioner) for air heating/ cooling

Heating & cooling hasn’t been considered further in this post.

Our Yearly Electricity Power Bill (estimated & actual for 2020)

The savings are actually slightly better than my previous post on the subject.

If our house was using…	yearly electricity bill	saving
tariff 31/41, no solar panels, resistive element hot water (estimated)	$1,300
just switch to tariff 93 (our actual)		$261
just add 6.5kW of solar panels (our actual)		$640
just switch to heat pump hot water (our actual)		$295
tariff 93, 6.5kW of solar panels, heat pump hot water (our actual)	$104	$1,196

Based on these yearly savings,

• the tariff switching fee of $66 will pay for itself in the 1st year,
• $6,400 of solar panels will pay for themselves in about 10 years (faster payback in most scenarios),
• the $2,000 (est.) extra cost for the hot water heat pump will likely not pay for itself in savings compared to a resistive element hot water heater.

Other notes:

1. Figures above are based on the Aurora Feed-In Tariff before 1st July 2021 of $0.08471/kWh. After this date it has been reduced to $0.06501/kWh, that is just 6-1/2 cents per kWh. For the lower FIT our yearly bill would have been approx. $100, still a $1,100 saving.
2. A well orientation set of solar panels will most likely save even more power. Ours are poorly orientated.
3. A poorly insulated house requiring more heating or cooling will add considerably to the yearly power bill.
4. Sustainable Living Tasmania did a comprehensive survey of 100 different household energy scenarios, and in only about 5% of those was it better to remain with tariffs 31/41.