Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Three hours of free electricity a day sounds like an easy yes. It isn’t, and the reason it isn’t has nothing to do with fine print buried in a contract of the Solar Sharer Offer.
It comes down to one simple question: which of these three groups are you in?
- You already have solar panels, no battery.
- You have solar and a battery, or you’re weighing one up.
- You have neither, and you’re on a standard plan.
The answer is different for each. The Solar Sharer Offer (SSO) doesn’t show up as a headline option on most retailer websites or on the government’s own comparison tool, Energy Made Easy. You have to search for it by name, and even then the actual rate card, the numbers that decide whether it’s worth it, is often a few clicks deep. This post pulls those numbers out.
The basics, quickly
The SSO started 1 July 2026. Retailers with more than 1,000 customers in NSW, South East Queensland or South Australia must offer at least one plan with three hours of free electricity daily, capped at 24 kWh. Note that the solar sharer scheme is not available yet in Victoria, although it will be in a few months.
- 11am to 2pm in NSW and South East Queensland
- 12pm to 3pm in South Australia
You share other people’s solar, you don’t need your own solar panels, renters are eligible, and you have to opt in yourself, it’s not automatic. You’ll need a smart meter. Apartments and retirement villages on embedded (shared building) networks generally aren’t eligible.
The trade-off, in every plan we looked at: the free window comes paired with a peak rate roughly a third higher than the company’s standard plan. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on which of the three groups above you’re in and then how you use the free electricity.
Group 1: You already have solar, no battery. It’s not for you.
If you have rooftop panels and no battery, you’re already generating your own electricity through the middle of the day. That’s the same 11am-2pm window the SSO offers for free. In practice, you’re either self-consuming your own solar during those hours already, or exporting the surplus and getting paid a feed-in tariff (FiT) for it.
Switching to an Solar Sharer Scheme plan doesn’t just fail to add much on top of that. It can cost you the FiT you’re currently earning. AGL’s Solar Sharer Offer pays 0c/kWh for exported solar, compared with 8c/kWh (first 8 kWh/day) on its standard TOU plan, Solar Savers. If you regularly export 5-8 kWh a day, that’s roughly $0.40-$0.65 a day, $12-$20 a month, gone.
There’s one exception worth knowing: if your system is very undersized for your usage and you’re already buying grid power during the day, in the 11am-2pm window specifically, the free hours could still help but it’s a stretch. For most solar-only households, the honest answer is: skip it. Check your last bill for how much you’re earning in feed-in credits before you switch anything.
Group 2: You have a battery. Look deeper. It might work.
To analyse this case we take a specific example of a customer in Sydney with a 12 kW solar system with a 10 kW inverter and a 15kWh battery. The underlying household usage averages 20 kWh per day.
We use the AGL standard time of use plan to compare with the AGL solar sharer (3 hr free) plan.
Our assumptions are pretty typical, but obviously the figures depend on your actual usage pattern and solar performance.
Scenario 1: Standard Time-of-Use (ToU)
The Strategy: The battery charges from your excess solar during the day with top up on cloudy days to load the battery before the peak period. The battery handles the entire evening peak (3–9 pm) and early night.
- 11:00 am – 2:00 pm: 1 kWh grid import. (The house runs on solar; the remaining solar fills the battery).
- 3:00 pm – 9:00 pm: 0 kWh grid import. (The 15 kWh battery easily covers the 6 kWh evening peak usage).
- All Other Times: 3 kWh grid import. (The battery drains overnight, requiring a small grid draw in the early morning with battery top-up on cloudy days).
- Solar Exports: The 12 kW array generates 45 kWh. The house uses 6 kWh directly during the day, and 14 kWh goes to the battery. Total daily grid export = 25 kWh.
Weighted Daily Cost Calculation:
- Daily Supply Charge: 158.63 c
- Peak Grid Import: 0 kWh × 54.18 c = 0 c
- Off-Peak Grid Import: 4 kWh × 21.63 c = 86.52 c
- Solar Export Credit: 25 kWh × -3.00 c = -75.00 c
- Net Daily ToU Cost: 170 c / day ($621)
Scenario 2: 3-Hour Free Solar Sharer Offer
The Strategy: Your battery is programmed to force-charge from the grid from 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm at $0.00/kWh.
- 11:00 am – 2:00 pm: 5 kWh grid import. (Deliberately pulled from the grid for free to instantly max out the battery and run baseline appliances).
- 3:00 pm – 9:00 pm: 0 kWh grid import. (Powered 100% by the battery).
- All Other Times: 2.5 kWh grid import. The battery reaches 100% heading into the afternoon, pushing the overnight grid drain much closer to sunrise.
- Solar Exports increase because the battery runs fuller, but export credit is zero.
Daily Cost Calculation:
- Daily Supply Charge: 176.24 c
- Free Window Import: 5 kWh × 0.00 c = 0 c
- Peak Grid Import: 0 kWh × 63.72 c = 0 c
- Off-Peak Grid Import: 2.5 kWh × 25.00 c = 62.50 c
- Solar Export Credit: 30 kWh × 0 c = 0 c
- Net Daily Free Plan Cost: 239 c / day ($871 pa)
The Verdict
The standard TOU Plan saves you roughly 69 cents a day, or around $250 a year.
The difference is mainly explained by the export credit of 75 c/day under the standard plan.
The 3 hour free plan would be more attractive if you have a very oversized battery and inverter compared with your solar system. For the typical customer it seems hard to make it work.
Group 3: No solar, no battery.
This is the group where “free electricity” sounds most appealing and needs the most scrutiny, because you can’t shift generation, only usage, and the plan’s rates outside the window apply to everything you use.
Here’s AGL’s Solar Sharer rate card for Sydney (postcode 2000), the exact plan you flagged:
| Charge | AGL Solar Sharer |
| 11am-2pm window | Free, first 24 kWh/day |
| Peak (3pm-9pm, summer/winter) | 63.7c/kWh |
| Off-peak (rest of day) | 27.6c/kWh |
| Daily supply charge | 176.2c/day ($1.76) |
| Solar feed-in tariff | 0c/kWh (not relevant if no solar) |
For comparison, a standard (non-solar) market offer in NSW is currently running closer to $1.00-$1.30/day supply charge and a flat usage rate somewhere around 28-35c/kWh. Against that baseline, this plan’s peak rate is roughly double, and the supply charge alone is 35-75% higher.
That’s the “price looks too high” instinct, confirmed with numbers. It only pays off if a large share of your household’s daily usage happens between 11am and 2pm, which for most working households isn’t the case. If your electricity use peaks in the evening (dinner, TV, hot water, kids’ bedtime routine), you’re paying a materially higher rate for that usage in exchange for hours you may barely use.
The honest verdict for this group: unless you’re home most weekdays and can genuinely run appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, pool pump or possibly an EV on a home fast charger) in the free window, this specific plan is likely to cost you more than staying on a standard offer. Check your own bill for how your usage is actually spread across the day (most energy company apps show this) before switching.
How to check your own numbers
- Pull up your last bill or your retailer’s app and look at your hourly or time-of-use breakdown.
- Find the specific Solar Sharer Offer’s full rate card (not just the “3 free hours” headline).
- Compare peak rate, off-peak rate, supply charge and (if you have solar) the feed-in tariff, line by line, against what you’re on now.
- Only switch if the free window covers real usage you already have, or will genuinely shift.
Or skip the digging: go toEnergy Umpire and we’ll run this comparison for you, for free.
If you would rather not work through all of that yourself, this is the kind of thing Energy Umpire does. We look across the market rather than a single retailer panel, read the full rate cards so a headline like “3 free hours” does not hide a higher peak rate or supply charge, and compare each plan against how your household actually uses power, including solar and battery where you have them. The result is a clear view of whether the Solar Sharer plan, or any other, actually leaves you better off for your address
Sources and figures: rate card comparison for AGL Solar Sharer vs AGL Solar Savers, Sydney, current as of July 2026, viaLenergy. Typical NSW/QLD battery sizing via SunWiz market data and SolarQuotes/industry sizing guides. Scheme rules via energy.gov.au and CHOICE. Rates move quickly and vary by postcode and distributor, confirm current numbers on Energy Made Easy or directly with your retailer before switching.
