Which Electricity Provider Should I Choose in this Open Electricity Market (OEM)?

If you’re still getting your electricity from SP Group, here’s a PSA:

Given that switching can be done in a few minutes and even online without any electricity disruption, there’s little reason for you to stick to SP Group anymore. There’s no rewards for being loyal, you guys!

I’ll go through how to pick the plan most suited to your household consumption in this article for greater savings.

Background: What’s happening?

We all know by now that when there’s a monopoly on prices, consumers are usually left worse off in the form of higher prices and no alternatives to turn to. That has been the case in the Singapore electricity market for the longest time.

But not anymore!

With the launch of the Open Electricity Market, we consumers can now buy direct from the retailers and mostly at a much lower price as well. We’ve been paying close to 25 cents per kWh of electricity to SP Group in the past few months, so it made sense to switch to a direct retailer instead since we will pretty much be getting guaranteed cost savings regardless.

The question was, which electricity provider should we choose?

Note that some retailers (like Geneco) get their power from parent companies which are power generators, whereas others are pure retailers who purchase electricity from the wholesale electricity market and then sell it back to us consumers.

Step 1: Review your recent electricity bills

We consolidated our past 4 months of electricity bills to check what was our average monthly consumption (kWh). Although SP Group offers an average consumption guide online here, it is tagged to household size and may not be an accurate indication of how much YOUR household is actually consuming. In our case, SP Group’s table estimates was extremely off our actual kWh consumed each month.

You can also compare both plans based on your average household consumption here on the Open Electricity Market website.

Step 2: Decide on the type of plan

There are 13 authorised electricity retailers to choose from, which makes it hard to compare them all! Hence, an easier way would be to decide on which type of plan is more suitable for you:

Fixed price plans are the best if you prefer a constant price of electricity, which makes it easier to calculate (and estimate) your monthly bills, because you simply pay a fixed fee per kWh consumed. At the moment, all of the retailers’ prices are lower than SP Group’s but this may change if the price of electricity tariffs go down.

The fixed price plans currently range from $0.1762 to $0.2301 per kWh.

Discount off the regulated tariff plans are basically a fluctuating price that is pegged to the regulated tariff i.e. electricity cost in Singapore. This means that you will always be paying less than what SP Group charges, but your bill could be higher or lower each month based on the prevailing tariff rates. The tariffs change every quarter and can be tracked here.

Most retailers are offering a 21 to 23% discount for these plans.

Step 3: Look out for hidden fees

Some retailers charge a lower price but sneakily get you to pay more in other forms instead. Here are some of the hidden types of fees you should be looking out in your contract before you sign:

1. TLF charges

The Transmission Loss Factor (TLF) charges refer to the cost of the electricity lost while it is being delivered to your house, as it goes through a network of system and some of the energy is lost in the form of heat or more. This means that as the consumer, you’ll be actually paying for less electricity than what you’re using because those TLF losses are being charged to you as well.

Previous retailers who passed these TLF charges to consumers include Keppel Electricity, Pacific Light, Sembcorp Power and Sembcorp Energy.

2. MDSC charges

Step 4: Sign-up Bonuses

Step 5: Choose a sustainable retailer

TLDR Final Thoughts

WHAT I EVENTUALLY DECIDED ON