Supply charge up, usage rate down since July 2026: who comes out ahead in South East Queensland

You may have spotted it on the first bill after 1 July: the daily supply charge is higher, the rate per kilowatt-hour is lower, and the headline news said prices were falling. Both can be true. The reference price for the whole year went down, and the way it is split between the fixed part of your bill and the part that depends on how much you use changed at the same time. Whether that split helps or hurts depends on how much power your house uses.

What changed on 1 July 2026

The regulator's Default Market Offer for 2026-27 is the price cap on standing offers in South East Queensland. The Queensland Competition Authority, which the Treasurer directed to look at how retailers responded, reports that the annual reference bill for a typical residential flat-rate home fell by 7.2% from the year before. It also reports that a large part of that fall came from changes to how the regulator calculates the benchmark, not from retailers' underlying costs dropping by the same amount. Network costs in the Energex area, for example, were estimated to rise.

The other change is the one that reached your bill. Before this year the cap was a single annual bill, and each retailer chose its own mix of supply charge and usage rate to land at or under it. For 2026-27 the regulator capped the supply charge and the usage rate separately. The Competition Authority says that removed most of the variety in standing offers and, in general, produced higher supply charges and lower usage rates than the year before.

What retailers did with it

The Competition Authority compared the flat-rate offers retailers had published on Energy Made Easy in June with those published in the first week of July. For standing offers, 16 of the 20 retailers with a residential flat-rate offer raised their supply charge, and on average the supply charge rose by 23.2% while the usage rate fell by 17.2%. Standing offers ended up at or slightly below the new reference bill.

Market offers, the plans most households are actually on, were messier. The report says that in the first week of July many retailers raised their supply charges and cut their usage rates, but some changed nothing, and the spread between the cheapest and dearest plans got wider rather than narrower. It also notes that 17 of 20 retailers had a residential flat-rate market offer below the reference bill, and that about 90% of those market offers were at or below it. The authors are careful to call this a snapshot of one week, and to say many customers are still on older plans with a different price structure.

Who comes out ahead and who pays more

A supply charge is paid every day whether the lights are on or not. A usage rate is paid only on the power you draw. So a higher supply charge with a lower usage rate moves cost from the people who use a lot to the people who use a little.

• A big household, or one with an electric car, uses enough power for the lower rate to outweigh the higher daily charge. The Competition Authority says bill reductions are more likely for customers with higher consumption, such as large families and electric vehicle owners.
• A small household, or a home with solar that draws little from the grid in the day, pays the higher daily charge on every one of the 365 days and has fewer kilowatt-hours to benefit from the lower rate. The Competition Authority names pensioners and solar customers as the groups where bill increases are more likely.
• A home with a controlled load, a time-of-use plan or a demand tariff sits outside the flat-rate comparison the report was asked to make. The authors say the outcomes on those plans may be very different from what the report shows.

None of that tells you which side of the line you are on. A house that looks small can use more than you think once a pool pump and a second fridge are counted, and a family house can use little if everyone is out. Your own bill says. See what the average Brisbane home uses for a yardstick, and reading your bill for where the supply charge and the usage lines sit.

Did my retailer have to pass the cut on?

A retailer on a standing offer had to move to the new cap on 1 July. On a market offer it did not have to match the reference bill or its fall, and the Competition Authority says it does not expect market offers to fall by the same percentage or at the same time, because wholesale savings take time to reach retailers through their hedging contracts. Retailers are also bound by misconduct rules enforced by the competition regulator to pass on sustained and substantial cost reductions, and the report notes that the federal Energy Minister asked the energy regulator and the competition regulator to look at some retailers' changes to supply charges and usage rates. We have not seen the outcome of that, so it is not something to count on.

What you can count on is the new limit on when rates rise. Since 1 July 2026, under an Australian Energy Market Commission rule, a retailer can raise the prices of a market plan only once every 12 months. For most plans that is a single date in July. When prices change in Queensland goes through it.

What to do about it

1. Find your last bill and write down the daily supply charge, the usage rate and the days in the period. Multiply the supply charge by the days to see what the fixed part cost you.
2. Divide the usage you were charged for by the days to get your own daily average. It is the number the rest of this depends on.
3. Compare plans on Energy Made Easy, and compare the whole plan, not one line of it. The Competition Authority's advice is that discounts, incentives, fees, the feed-in tariff and contract terms all change which plan is cheapest.
4. If you have solar, look at the feed-in tariff beside the supply charge. A plan with a low supply charge and a modest feed-in tariff can beat the reverse for a home that exports a lot. Which retailer has the best feed-in tariff has more.
5. Read the better offer message on your next bill. It only compares your own retailer's plans, but it is a prompt.