Reliant

Review by eFreeware

If you buy your electricity from Reliant and live in a home rather than a business, this app is the one the company built for you. It puts your account in one place: usage, billing, alerts and a handful of connected devices. The app is free, and the developer's own summary of it is short: power your way.

What appeals to me most is the range of things you can check without a phone call. You can look at electricity, solar and electric vehicle data, see a projected bill, pay what you owe and reach support if something goes wrong. For a household that already has a Reliant account, that is a reasonable set of reasons to keep the app installed.

It has been on Google Play since the middle of 2013 and carries a 4.8 average from more than 9,200 ratings, with over half a million installs. Those numbers suggest it does its job for the people who use it.

Built for Reliant households, not for everyone

The first thing to understand is that this is an account app, not a general energy tool. It is only available to residential customers, so a small business with a commercial supply contract has no use for it. Every screen is tied to your own service.

Within that group, the fit varies. If you are on a standard plan and want to see how much electricity you used last week, what your bill is likely to be and whether it has been paid, the app covers all of it. If you have solar panels or an electric vehicle, it goes further, pulling generation, consumption and charging information into the same place.

Prepaid customers get a different experience. The developer notes that account alerts are not available to people on a Reliant prepaid electricity plan, so that group loses one of the more useful features. What they get instead is a payment calculator for budgeting usage against prepaid funds.

Usage tracking that goes past the monthly total

The core of the app is electricity usage. You can view it by day, week, month or year, which matters more than it sounds: a monthly figure tells you what happened, while a daily view can show you when. Alongside that, the app shows a projected bill and lets you compare current usage with past periods.

Solar customers get a second layer. Usage and generation are both tracked, alongside an Energy Efficiency score. For anyone trying to work out whether their panels are performing as expected, having generation and consumption side by side is the useful part, since one without the other rarely explains much.

Electric vehicle owners are covered too. Charging on a schedule is a sensible thing to want from an electricity account app, and seeing the numbers attached to it makes the case more concrete.

Thermostat and battery syncing

The app connects to a Google Nest thermostat, and you can adjust it remotely from your phone. For a household that already has one, that removes the need to open a separate app when you want to change the temperature. Reliant is not affiliated with Google, and the developer notes that Nest is a Google trademark.

There is also syncing with Goal Zero Yeti, the portable power stations. That is a narrower audience, but it fits the same idea: the app becomes a single place to look at the equipment attached to your home's electricity, rather than one app per device.

I would treat the device features as a bonus rather than the reason to install. They are only useful if you own the hardware, and the account tools are what most people will open the app for. Still, the combination is more than many utility apps attempt.

Billing, alerts and account admin

Paying is straightforward in principle: a saved card or bank account can settle your bill. The developer describes the payment as quick and secure, which is the sort of claim every billing app makes, and the practical value is simply not having to re-enter card details each time.

Reliant Account Alerts are the feature I would expect to matter most day to day. Prepaid electricity customers cannot use this, so plan around it if that is you.

Account essentials are here as well. You can review your plan details and manage account settings, and eligible customers can renew, transfer or change their plan from the app. That last part saves a call, provided you fall into the eligible group.

Support is available around the clock. FAQs, payment locations, outage reporting and support are all in the app. Reporting an outage from the same app that shows your usage is a small convenience, but a real one when the power is already out.

What it costs

The app itself is free, with no ads and no in-app purchases. What you pay for is your electricity, through whatever plan you have signed up for.

That distinction is worth keeping in mind. The app is a way to manage an account you already hold, not a product you buy on its own. If you are not a Reliant residential customer, the app is not built for you.

For everyone else, the cost question is really about your plan rather than the app.

How it compares with the alternatives

The obvious comparison is with the website. The developer even points people to reliant.com/app for more information. The app's advantage is convenience: a stored payment method, alerts that reach your phone and device syncing in one place.

Another comparison is with a third-party energy monitoring setup, the kind that uses its own hardware to measure consumption circuit by circuit. Those can go deeper into where your electricity goes, but they are separate purchases and separate accounts.

A further comparison is with the thermostat and power station apps themselves. The case for Reliant is consolidation, not capability, and that is a fair reason to use it if you are already in the account several times a month.

A practical pick for Reliant residential customers

I would install this if I were a Reliant residential customer who wants usage, billing and alerts in one place, especially if I had solar panels, an electric vehicle or a Nest thermostat to keep an eye on. It is free, it does not interrupt you with ads, and the account tools cover the tasks most people actually need.

The limits are clear enough. It is for residential customers only, and prepaid customers do without account alerts. The device features depend on hardware you may not own. If none of that applies to you, the app is exactly what it says it is: a way to run your Reliant account from your phone.

What's new in version 10.0.1

Patch release to provide you with an improved app experience.