June 16, 2020
The Circuit Breaker (CB) is no joke at all. We have to work from home (WFH) and the kids have to attend Home Based Learning (HBL). We practically have to stay at home 24×7. And for the last two months, you can see the impact of electricity usage. I started to WFH since mid-February till march. My usage is about 60-70% more than before (comparing Dec 2019 vs May 2020).
And I just realized that I forgot to blog about some important thing. Hahahaha.
Who do I buy from?
I still buy from SP Group!!! This is my Electricity bill. And yes, I have switch to buy electricity from “The wholesale electricity market at half-hourly wholesale electricity prices through SP Group”!!! Instead of buying from SP Group at the regulated tariff price with services. I will explain this later.
How much I am paying now as of today?
This is how you calculate. You don’t have to seach what is the rate, or so on. Just divide the total bill by the usage. That will gives you what the electricity rates you are paying at the moment.
My total electricity bill is S$258.80 (before GST).
My total electricity usage is 2,368 kWh.
==> So, my electricity rate I am paying is $258.80 / 2,368 kWh = S$0.10925 per kWh.
How much I was paying before the switch?
I managed to dig out my old bill.
I was paying S$420.78 for the month of July 2019 (for the usage from June 21, 2019 until July 20, 2019). I moved into this new place of mine on June 18, 2019. And I already subscribed and pay for the bill from March 2019. July 2019 was the last month I paid to SP Group using the regular tariff price. (It is called “tariff” means it is governed by government so that SP Group do not monopolize the market alone, so you cannot blame SP Group, haha).
Shockingly, I was paying S$0.2422 /kWh (for 1248 kWh usage) and another S$0.2279 (for 520 kWh).
Again, you take S$420.78 / (520 + 1248) kWh = S$0.238 per kWh.
So, I was paying 23.8 cents per kWh then comparing to the 11 cents kWh I am paying now. That is a wopping 46.2% savings.
Another way to look at it is… $420.78 for 1768 kWh usage then vs. $258.80 for 2368.89 kWh usage. My usage increased by 34% but my electricity bill dropped by 61.5%.
Regardless of how you do the calculations, I paid much much lesser of electricity bill than before. So, after you see this, please go figure out how to switch to pay using “The wholesale electricity market at half-hourly wholesale electricity prices through SP Group”!!!
Take a look at my historical payment history. This is what I have been paying for my bills. And before that, you can guess… I lived in a much smaller place (i.e. 1950 sq. ft.) back then at Park West comparing the 3000 sq. ft. now at Madeira.
I was speaking to one of my FB friend and she was paying about S$350 for her electricity for a 3 room HDB. That is because she has not changed to retailer rate or the wholesales electric rates.
Retail rate vs. Wholesales rate
https://www.openelectricitymarket.sg/business/purchase-options
OK, go to above link, and check it out. It says it pretty clear in there. EMA opens up the Electricity Market, and there are 3 choices to choose from.
First, stay where you are, pay that 23.8 cents rate from your good old buddy, SP Group. That is called a regulated tariff price. yeap! 23.8 cents.
Secondly. you have the new electricity retailers. This is what you have been seeing on the street, road show, shopping mall, your friend selling it like MLM like that.
Lastly, there is this less well known third option –> offered by SP Group, you old good buddy. They offer you to buy at the “wholesales” price thru them from the wholesales electricty market. This price changes every half-hour and they will sell you at a “variable” “unknown” price. Only when they bid the price then, they can average it out. This is the option you go for.
So, there is a link for you to compare the prices among the retailers. Please take note that SP Group is not one of the retailers. Instead, they offered either to buy at regulated tariff or buy at wholesales price (which is cheaper) thru SP Group. Because the price changes every half hour, so, they could not give you a precise pricing rate. And that actaully scared people away. I am guessing, they also don’t want you to switch from 23.8 cents regulated tariff price to 11 cents wholesales price. They will drop a lot of their revenue ya.
Always remember, there is only one power grid in Singapore. So, where does all these retailers buying from? Well you can guess. And at what rates they are buying from this power grid owner. You can guss that too. i.e. buy from electricity market? Hahaha
Price comparison Tool: https://www.openelectricitymarket.sg/residential/faqs/price-comparison-tool
So, who has the best rate among the retailers?
Read here. A lot of people has reported and blog about it.
From the above link, there are some pricing here…
So, here comes the complicated calculations of your electricity retailer. Take note, there are PEAK and off-PEAK prices. But most importantly, look at the OFF-PEAK prices… 16.16 cents from Keppel. Electric, 18.56 cents from Semcorp Power. Free sunday usage from Geneco. 30% off regulated tariff which is 30% of $0.2279 per kWh which is $0.1595 per kWh la.
So complicated, so much pattern. Hahaha… bear in mind. This is what the sales tactic need to do to get your attention. All these retailers are able to help you to safe from SP Group using the original regulated tariff pricing scheme. But I am guessing none of them can beat SP Group’s less known wholesales pricing scheme.
Another good comparison among the retailers.
https://blog.moneysmart.sg/budgeting/sembcorp-keppel-cheapest-electricity-retailers/
They list out more comparison. All these fixed price per kWh is > $0.17 /kWh.
Did you notice something? None of these blogs actaully comparing all of these prices with the price buying from “The wholesale electricity market at half-hourly wholesale electricity prices through SP Group”!!!
I wonder why? Well the they must give chance to these poor new comer, i.e. Electricty retailers la. When you surf the SP Group web site, they will point you to the Electricity retailers. They only talk about wholesale electricty market with the half hourly wholesale electricity rates briefly offered by SP Group. They don’t even mention any price, nor comparison.
The only useful blog is some one switched from the retailers i.e. Geneco back to SP Group by buying from wholesale market thru SP Group. Checkout this guy, i.e. Zit Seng’s Blog talk about how he saves from switching back from Geneco to SP Group buying from the wholesale electricity market.
Furthermore…
https://www.spgroup.com.sg/what-we-do/billing/helping-you-change-and-save
There is also no real useful tutorial to teach you how to switch to buy from wholesale electricity market.
OK, I think I have already provide all the information for you to do the comparison. So, decision is up to you. Whether to save money or not. To save more money or not.
Embarrasingly, plesae don’t ask me how to change. Because I remember, I login to the SP Group website, and then, choose to give concents to SP Group to but from the wholesale electricity market.
I thnk is something like clicking on this … “Create New Consent”.. to allow SP Group to buy from wholesale market.
After that, some one actually will come and install a smart meter. I think it cost $40. Soon or later you going to pay for that and within a few years, every household will have the smart meter. With the smart meter, you can see a lot more data usage on the web site or your hand phone SP Group app. Of course, you don’t have to change it now. But, you can see your usage at real time wor.. that’s powerful… hahaha
They will take I think 1-2 weeks to switch it. I think is 14 days if I am not mistaken. They will terminate your billing arrangement with SP Group under regulated tariff rates. And they will create a new billing for you for the wholesales rate. No interuption of power. That’s it. Very easy to change.
I am not from SP Group. So, don’t ask me. If really don’t know, cannot find answer, may be it is a good thing to give SP Group a call. Tell them you want to swtich to buy from Wholesales electricity market at the 1/2 hourly change rate via SP Group. They will guide you from there.
Again, I want to point you to this guy Zit Seng’s blog on this wholesales electricity market.
I quoted…
If you’re interested to get on this wholesale electricity plan, here’s what you need to do:
- If you are still on the regulated tariff, just head to SP Utilities Portal and look for the option to switch to the wholesale electricity plan.
- If you are already on one of the electricity retailers in the Open Electricity Market, you need to tell your present retailer that you want to quit and return to SP Services’ wholesale electricity plan. It took me quite a long while to quit Geneco (almost a month), so be prepared to plan your exit ahead of time.
Even if not required, it is best to get the new smart meters (Advanced Metering Infrastructure), which records your electricity consumption in real time. This allows SP Services to bill you according to your actual half-hourly consumption. Otherwise, you will be billed based on a presumed national consumption profile, which may work for or against you.
OK. Happy Saving!
