Powerdirect review

Green Electricity score

This score is based on the company’s Green Electricity Guide star rating.

Complaints score

This score is based on the number of complaints measured as a proportion against the number of customers. The higher the percentage, the better. Data via the Australian Energy Regulator – updated annually.

Call response score

This score is based on how likely the retailer is to answer a call within 30 seconds. The higher the percentage, the better. Data via the Australian Energy Regulator – updated annually.

Powerdirect are migrating their customers over to AGL as per their website. They are still included in our results because there are a fair portion of households still with them.

Partly Australian-owned, Powerdirect was established in 2000 by AGL to serve the electricity needs of just under 80,000 customers in Australia. While the company is not well known, Powerdirect claims to pride itself on providing quality customer service and reliable electricity at a reasonable price.  

While Powerdirect concentrates predominately on its business customers, the company also supplies electricity to residential customers throughout Australia. It is publicly owned and a subsidiary of AGL, with head offices in Sydney, and call centre in both Australia and the Philippines. 

Since AGL owns Powerdirect, and AGL’s product is climate active, which is where Powerdirect gets all its power to onsell – its product is carbon neutral based on the Climate Active standard. AGL owns and operates coal, gas, battery, hydro, solar and wind energy. It operates large coal-fired power stations and gas-fired power plants.

Contact details for Powerdirect

powerdirect.com.au

1300 138 647

Which states does Powerdirect supply?

CHOICE Expert Rating on Powerdirect

CHOICE verdict on Powerdirect

Environmental

• Powerdirect does not own any power stations. All energy it supplies comes through AGL’s assets, which include coal power stations.
• The company offers a lower-than-average price on GreenPower.
• AGL’s emissions intensity is above average. AGL has also registered its product as climate active, and that means Powerdirect’s product is carbon neutral.
• Powerdirect’s parent company also owns solar, hydro and wind power plants, but these make up only a small fraction of the company’s energy mix.

Customer service

• 413 (0.6%) of Powerdirect’s customers made complaints against the company in 2021-22.
• 54% of customer service calls made to Powerdirect are answered within 30 seconds, according to AER’s 2021-22 data.
• The average wait time for a customer service call made to Powerdirect is only 195 seconds.
• Only 10.9% of calls made to Powerdirect are abandoned before being answered.

Powerdirect energy sources

As Powerdirect is a subsidiary or AGL and doesn’t own any generation assets of its own, the energy mix of power supplied by Powerdirect is the same as that supplied by AGL.

October – Regional households are struggling to pay power bills and it’s not just about energy prices – Ron D’Arcy is often the last person in his family of nine to shower, so when the hot water ran out one winter’s morning, it didn’t occur to him the electricity had been cut off.