Start with the billing period
Check how many days the bill covers and whether it represents summer, winter or a shoulder season. One short or unusual period can distort the picture. Several recent bills are more useful than one isolated total.
Find total electricity use
Look for energy use measured in kilowatt-hours. Compare the total with the daily average shown for the period. This is the starting point for understanding the household load, not an instruction to fill the roof automatically.
Useful first email: attach a recent bill, state your suburb, and mention any big changes coming—an EV, electric hot water, pool equipment, air conditioning or people moving in or out.
Separate usage from cost
A high bill can come from high usage, a particular tariff structure, supply charges, or a combination. Solar and batteries act on energy use in different ways, so a dollar total alone is not enough to size either system.
Look for tariff clues
Your bill may show a flat tariff or different time windows. The labels and times vary by retailer plan. A battery discussion needs the actual plan because the value of moving energy from one time to another depends on what that energy costs.
Ask what the bill cannot show clearly
Many bills do not reveal a detailed household load profile. They also cannot show roof area, shade, switchboard condition, phase, export limits or equipment space. Those gaps are why a site assessment and plain explanation still matter.
- When is the home usually occupied?
- Which large loads run during the day, evening or overnight?
- Is solar already installed, and can its monitoring be accessed?
- Is battery backup important, and for which selected circuits?
- Are future EV or appliance loads likely?
Use the bill to test a proposal
Ask how the proposed solar size relates to daytime use, how the battery size relates to evening use, and which tariff assumptions are being used. A useful proposal can explain those links without hiding behind a package name.