Powertracer enables the price of clean energy to be set at a different price to that set by your electricity retailer. Trades are priced according to the source of the energy and executed between community members in four stages.
Contracted Trades
The first trades to be executed are called contracted trades and are used for our Deal Direct plans.
These are typically direct trades with large solar or wind farms
When you join a particular program there may be a contracted trade set up on Powertracer in advance by your retailer.
The Deal Direct offer is pre-accepted as a default so that if you are consuming energy and the wind or solar farm is producing enough energy, then you will buy this energy first at the Deal Direct plan price.
As more solar and wind farms join the Deal Direct offer customers can nominate additional contracted trades and increase their percentage of clean energy matched.
2. Peer-to-peer Trades
The next trades to be executed are called peer-to-peer trades.
These are direct trades with people that you know
An offer to buy or sell is made (proposing a price)
This “offer” is sent to the other party and they either accept or reject it.
If it is accepted, then this trade is added to your sequence of preferred trades
You can have trades for both “Buy” and “Sell”. In the case of “Buy” trades you can set the priority or order in which you buy from your sellers.
For example, this means you can prioritise to buy energy from a family member above buying energy from your neighbour.If two or more trades to buy energy are set at the same priority, the trade accepted first will be the first to execute.
3. Community Trades
The third stage of trades are called community trades. In this case the two trading parties don’t necessarily know each other.
Every community member can set their community trade prices on Powertracer. This involves setting the minimum sell price and the maximum buy price.
After the contracted trades and the peer-to-peer trades are executed, we match up the highest buy prices with the lowest sell prices available. When each seller’s exported energy is fully allocated we move on to the next lowest sell price and assign buyers until all the available community energy pool is exhausted or there are no buyers left offering a suitable price.
The price for all community trades in a trading period (30 mins) is the same for all buyers and sellers in a community, however this will vary from period to period.
4. Retailer Default Trades
Finally, we assign the energy not traded within the previous trades to the retailer default trade with your retailer – at the normal energy rates, for energy imported and consumed, or generated and exported.
These trades will typically happen when there is not enough energy available from renewable sources to supply the community (for example, on still nights), or if your priced offers have not been matched with another community member.
Note some of these trade types may not be available on through your retailer.