By default, Bill Hero runs its analysis bill-by-bill rather than using aggregated bill data covering a full year.

Of course we understand seasonal variation in energy consumption and solar production, and it may seem counter-intuitive not to base the recommendation on a full year of data. This article explains why we've designed the system this way.
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As more people install solar, and as the average size and generation capacity of those solar systems grows, the average seasonal variation in energy exported to and imported from the grid is becoming more and more pronounced, and so it's becoming less and less realistic to find a single 'one size fits all' plan that will deliver a competitive result year round.

The difference in price between the 'best' year-round single plan on an aggregated basis vs best plans on a per-bill basis can be very significant, so the potential savings available through the per-bill approach can be substantial.
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Energy plans always include trade-offs between daily connection charges, consumption charges and feed-in tariff rates.

For solar customers, the FiT rates that retailers offer are funded by the margin they make on energy. This means that the most generous FiT rates are usually coupled with relatively uncompetitive prices for KwH consumption, meaning that the best summer-time plan when consumption is lower, and exports are higher is less likely to yield competitive outcomes during winter when you'll be importing more and exporting less.

Adopting an aggregated 'full year' comparison strategy only means that you'll be finding the 'least worst' compromise annual plan.

The real work in switching is not in completing the application to the next retailer, but in deciding what to do.

The switch application process takes only about 10 minutes, and on average, we find about $350 in annualised savings for our new subscribers.

Bill Hero keeps the effort expended as low as possible, by automatically running a personalised comparison for you on every single bill, so it takes no work at all for you to see what is available across the market, and understand what your potential savings are.
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We designed our 'Bothered Threshold' feature to help you tailor the responses the system generates for you – so you can decide to switch only when the identified savings exceed your own value placed on the effort required.

We'll let you know whenever we analyse a bill and find annualised savings for you greater than your personal Bothered Threshold. You can change your Bothered Threshold at any time, and even when the system finds savings for you greater than your Bothered Threshold, it's still your choice to proceed with a switch or not.

Our system focuses on checking the market on every single bill, and it will let you know whenever savings are available to you greater than your Bothered Threshold.

Month by month and bill by bill, the seasonal variations will flow through, and the system will keep you updated on the potential savings based on your Bothered Threshold.

Energy bills document historical consumption from the past billing period, so there's a lag in using that data to price the bill against currently available plans, to help make a decision to switch.

We've explored how we can reliably predict future consumption to help subscribers move to the best plan for their anticipated consumption in the next billing period.

There are two main ways to approach this: algorithmically projecting future billing period consumption or using the previous year's bills for the equivalent period.

The algorithmic approach, using average seasonal factors, has the advantage of being simple, but at the individual household level, we've found it unreliable. Actual energy consumption is dependent on the unique characteristics of your home, and the appliances you use and is very sensitive to weather events.

Theoretically, we could request a full year's worth of bills and base each analysis on the previous years' consumption for the upcoming period. We've found this also unrealistic to manage at scale since many households do not have easy access to old bills, and many retailers make it difficult to access old bills in their customer portals.

For these reasons, Bill Hero policy is to work with the factual consumption data documented in each bill, and we've based our automated processes around this reliable, regular, factual data source.