Indigo Power has recently relaunched our electricity retail offer. With customers re-signing and reviewing prices, we’ve had lots of direct conversations about what our pricing means, how it works, and why we’ve designed it this way.
The first step is understanding the pitfalls we’re trying to avoid. For that, the best source is the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) ongoing Inquiry into the National Electricity Market.
The problem the ACCC keeps finding: electricity plans are hard to understand
Electricity pricing can be complex. Discounts, conditional offers, benefit periods and usage assumptions can make it difficult for customers to compare plans on a like-for-like basis.
And there are so many plans. The most recent ACCC report (December 2025) found there were around 145,500 electricity plans in the market as of August 2025. That’s confusing in itself, but the ACCC also found that some retailers use the same name for plans with different pricing, creating multiple versions of what appears to be the same plan.
The ACCC’s December 2023 report observed that expensive plans, priced above the default offers, often use proportional conditional discounts. This makes comparison harder and can disguise high underlying prices.
Conditional discounts can create big bill shocks
Conditional discounts are one of the clearest examples of how complexity can become expensive.
The ACCC found that among residential customers paying prices more than 25% above the default offers, 96% had a conditional discount (with an average conditional discount of 29%). It also showed that some customers, including customers in hardship, don’t consistently receive the discount they’re being shown. In the ACCC’s December 2023 report, 24% of “hardship only” customers and 24% of “payment plan only” customers failed to achieve their conditional discounts.
What this means in practice is that conditional discounts can lift the base price very high, and then expose customers to those high prices when they can’t meet the conditions. And it’s often the customers least able to afford it who end up paying the undiscounted rate.
The bill impact isn’t small. In a worked example, the ACCC estimated that failing to meet a conditional discount could increase annual costs by $557 per year (before late fees).
There is a “loyalty penalty”
Many customers sign up on competitive offerings but find themselves on non-competitive outcomes over time. The ACCC’s December 2023 analysis found that, in August 2023 (assuming conditional discounts were achieved):
- 47% of residential customers were on plans with a calculated annual cost equal to or higher than the default offer.
- 42% of concession customers were on plans with a calculated annual cost equal to or higher than the default offer (those who need the best prices aren’t getting them!).
- 79% of residential customers in the sample could achieve a better offer by switching to a competitively priced acquisition offer.
The ACCC also frames electricity retail for many customers as a “set and forget” task, meaning retailers compete strongly at acquisition, but are not incentivised to keep existing customers competitive.
Updated analysis in the ACCC’s December 2025 report shows this “loyalty penalty” effect continuing. Customers on plans more than three years old paid, on average, $221 more than customers on new plans (all regions combined). The ACCC also notes that keeping many legacy plans in operation can support retailers to segment their customer base and set higher prices for customers on older plans. The ACCC found meaningful potential savings if customers switch to their retailer’s better or best offer, the average quoted saving for residential customers was $291.
So what do we do differently at Indigo Power?
When we set our prices for the 2026 financial year (as outlined in our July 2025 pricing webinar), we used a few clear principles.
- One best price (no loyalty tax)
We think electricity retail should be close to a set-and-forget service. Who wants to change retailers every year? But to make “set and forget” fair, customers need to be able to trust that they aren’t paying a loyalty penalty.
That’s why we don’t do “introductory pricing” for new customers while leaving existing customers on something worse later. We’re not using existing customers to subsidise an eye-catching deal designed purely to win sign-ups.
As a result, we don’t always have the lowest headline offer on comparison sites, but customers can trust they’re not being moved onto (or left on) a worse offer. Everyone is on our best pricing.
- Simple choices, not endless options
We offer two pricing options, designed around how people actually use electricity, not a maze of tiny variations.
Community Energy Hub Plan
Designed for customers who want stability and protection from volatility, simple, steady, and predictable.
Energy Shapers Plan
Designed for customers who can shift some usage into the middle of the day. It rewards imports in solar-rich hours and better aligns household behaviour with a grid that increasingly has abundant daytime renewable energy.
- No conditional discount traps
We don’t use conditional discounts, and we try to keep our pricing as easy to understand, and as fair, as possible.
- Incentivise efficiency and renewable energy use, without requiring obsession
We want daytime consumption to be rewarded, because that’s when solar is abundant. We use a simple time-of-use approach to reward energy usage between 10am and 3pm, and customer exports at times when they’re most valuable.
It’s the same pricing every day, so customers can set and forget.
Summary: fair pricing is the point
The ACCC’s work keeps pointing to the same underlying truth: when electricity pricing becomes complicated, through massive plan variety, reused plan names, conditional discounts and legacy pricing, customers can end up paying more and many won’t even realise.
At Indigo Power, we think electricity retail should be close to “set and forget” but customers need to be able to trust they won’t be unfairly penalised for staying.
That’s why:
- we don’t apply a loyalty tax
- we don’t use conditional discounts
- and we keep a limited number of options built around real-world customer needs.
Because in an essential service, pricing should be transparent enough that people can make confident decisions, and then get on with their lives.
Bibliography
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Inquiry into the National Electricity Market — December 2025 Report.
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Inquiry into the National Electricity Market — December 2023 Report.
Ben is Indigo Power’s Managing Director. He has a passion for collaborative initiatives that positively impact our communities. Ben leads our skilled and committed projects team, driving the uptake of community-scale clean energy technologies in communities around Australia.