{"id":10836,"date":"2017-05-03T14:03:06","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T03:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=10836"},"modified":"2024-01-02T15:45:46","modified_gmt":"2024-01-02T06:15:46","slug":"south-australia-is-actually-second-cheapest-state-for-household-electricity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/south-australia-is-actually-second-cheapest-state-for-household-electricity\/","title":{"rendered":"South Australia Is Actually Second Cheapest State For Household Electricity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Malcolmnocchio\"

Not true Malcolm! A typical house in SA pays less per kWh for electricity than any other state except NSW.<\/p><\/div>\n

Grid electricity is not cheap in South Australia.\u00a0 Here in Adelaide it’s never a happy time when I get an electricity bill.\u00a0 My last quarterly bill was $203 for 389 kilowatt-hours of use.\u00a0 All up, that means I paid over 52 cents for each kilowatt-hour of grid electricity.<\/p>\n

But my usage isn’t typical.\u00a0 Most South Australians pay much less per kilowatt-hour.\u00a0 I decided to investigate how much typical households pay in each state and territory and gathered information on electricity consumption, fixed costs<\/a>, charges per kilowatt-hour, electricity bill discounts, and controlled tariffs1<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

After crunching the numbers I found typical households in Victoria now pay the most for grid electricity, while those in Canberra pay the least.\u00a0 I also found that of all the states, South Australia had the second lowest cost of grid electricity, which is definitely not what politicians and pundits on TV, in newspapers, and on the internet tell us.<\/p>\n

We have heard over and over that South Australia has the most expensive electricity in the nation and how that’s supposed to be the fault of renewable energy.\u00a0 But it is simply not true.\u00a0 It is coal powered Victoria which has the most expensive residential grid electricity while South Australia is the second cheapest state after mostly coal powered NSW.<\/p>\n

The average price paid by typical households in Australia, after adjusting for population, comes to 29.4 cents a kilowatt-hour.\u00a0 This is not the highest cost of grid electricity in the world, but it is among the most expensive and the bad news is electricity retailers are about to push prices higher.<\/p>\n

Before long I’ll write an article detailing how much extra you’ll soon have to pay for grid electricity so you’ll know how much nose widening surgery you’ll have to schedule to make it easier to pay through it, but the rest of this article is about how I worked out how much representative households in each state and territory pay per kilowatt-hour.<\/p>\n

A Typical Household Is Not An Average Household<\/h2>\n

Finding out how much the typical household pays\u00a0for grid electricity seems like it should be easy.\u00a0 I could just use the SolarQuotes Electricity Plan Comparison<\/a> page to find out what people are charged per kilowatt-hour and their daily supply charges.\u00a0 But to do that I’ll also need to know how much grid electricity typical Australian households use.<\/p>\n

A typical household is not the same as an average household.\u00a0 By typical, I mean the most common type.\u00a0 For example, the average household has 2.6 people, but the most common household size is 2 on account of how the police frown upon cutting people into portions.<\/p>\n

Just what is typical will vary from state to state.\u00a0 While 2 is the most common household size throughout Australia other considerations vary.\u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n