Using Synergy smart meter data to understand your Perth electricity usage

Most Perth homes now have a smart meter — and Synergy makes the half-hourly consumption data available through your My Account portal. This data is one of the most useful tools for understanding your electricity usage, verifying your solar performance, and identifying wasteful appliances.

Accessing your smart meter data

1. Log in at synergy.net.au → My Account
2. Navigate to Usage → Usage graphs (or View my usage depending on the current interface)
3. Select the date range and resolution: daily, weekly, or half-hourly

Half-hourly data: Available for smart meter customers. Shows your net consumption from the grid in 30-minute intervals. For solar customers, this shows your net draw from Synergy's grid — so a reading of 0 kWh in a half-hour period means solar covered all consumption during that time.

What the data shows for solar households

For a solar household on Synergy, the smart meter records net import only — not total generation. This is important:

• A reading of 0 kWh in a half-hour period = solar covered all consumption during that 30 minutes
• A positive reading = you imported from the grid (either solar wasn't sufficient or it wasn't generating)
• Negative readings do not appear in the consumption graph — export is recorded separately by Synergy and shown as a DEBS credit on your bill

What this means in practice: The smart meter data shows you the gaps in your solar coverage — when your household drew from the grid because solar generation wasn't sufficient. Peak gaps typically appear:

• Early morning before sunrise
• Evenings after solar stops generating
• Cloudy days when generation drops
• High-consumption events that exceeded solar output (starting a 6kW electric oven, running multiple air conditioners simultaneously)

Identifying your base load from the data

Your overnight consumption (midnight to 5am, when solar generates nothing) reflects your home base load — appliances that run continuously: the refrigerator, freezer, standby mode appliances, an always-on modem and router, any running aquarium or pool pump on a night schedule.

How to calculate your base load:

1. In My Account, view your half-hourly data for a typical weekday
2. Find the overnight period (say midnight to 5am — 10 half-hour intervals)
3. Average those readings

A typical Perth home base load is 0.2–0.6 kWh per half-hour (0.4–1.2 kW continuous). If your base load is above 1.0 kWh per half-hour (2kW continuous), something is running that shouldn't be — typically an old chest freezer, a hot water system heating overnight, or a pool pump left on.

Finding large consumption events

The half-hourly data makes large consumption events visible as spikes. Common causes of spike patterns:

Electric hot water system heating (3.6–6kW elements): A 1–2 hour spike in the morning or mid-afternoon. Check whether your hot water system has a timer — if it's heating at peak import times (evenings), you're paying A1 peak rates when Midday Saver super off-peak (9am–3pm) or solar surplus would be free.

Air conditioning cycles: Multiple medium spikes during the hottest part of the day (12pm–4pm) in summer. Useful for understanding actual AC consumption (often 1.5–3kWh per half-hour for a split system).

Pool pump: A consistent 0.5–1.0 kWh per half-hour for several hours daily. The timer setting determines whether this runs from solar (free) or from the grid (costly). Moving pool pump runtime to 9am–3pm on a solar-equipped home is a common win.

Verifying your DEBS export credit

Your smart meter separately records your export to the grid — the data visible in My Account is import-only, but the export data is what drives your DEBS credit.

To verify your DEBS credit is correct:

1. Check your quarterly bill for the total kWh exported and the DEBS credit amount
2. Divide the credit by the kWh exported to verify the effective rate (should be between 2c and 10c depending on your export timing mix)
3. If the effective rate seems too low (below 5c when you believe most export is midday), contact Synergy — there may be a metering timing issue

Your inverter monitoring app (Sungrow iSolarCloud, Goodwe SEMS, Fronius Solar.web, SolarEdge) provides export data with time-of-day granularity — compare this against your Synergy DEBS credit as a cross-check.

Spotting a metering fault

If your smart meter data shows abnormally high consumption at times when you're confident usage was low (e.g., 60 kWh overnight when the household was asleep), this is a flag for a potential metering fault. Steps:

1. Verify the data is for the correct meter (NMI number should match your bill)
2. Take a manual meter reading at a known time and compare to the meter history data
3. If there's a discrepancy, contact Synergy to investigate

See the separate guide on disputing a Synergy bill for the formal dispute process.

Using data to choose the right tariff

The half-hourly import data is the key input for deciding whether Midday Saver is better than A1 for your household.

Midday Saver structure:

• 9am–3pm: 8.8511c/kWh (super off-peak — cheapest import time)
• 3pm–9pm: 53.5765c/kWh (peak — most expensive)
• All other times: 29.5789c/kWh (off-peak)

Using your half-hourly data:

• Add up your import kWh during 9am–3pm (the hours you'd pay 8.8511c)
• Add up your import kWh during 3pm–9pm (you'd pay 53.5765c)
• Add up your import kWh at other times

Run the calculation for both tariffs and compare against your actual bills. Midday Saver is most advantageous for solar households that import little energy during 3pm–9pm (battery owners, WFH households, or those who have shifted large loads to the day).

Your Synergy My Account half-hourly data is the most granular view of your electricity usage available. Combined with your inverter monitoring app's generation data, it gives a complete picture: when you generated, when you consumed from solar, when you drew from the grid, and when you exported. Tools like BillWise can help you turn this data into actionable tariff and usage recommendations.