Section
What powering your home costs and what help is on offer: price resets, rebate schemes and their fine print, every figure dated and linked to the document that sets it.
Rebates
Regulation amendments in force since 1 May 2026 made the STC Factor behind the federal battery discount step down twice a year instead of once, and faster. The department has published every figure to 2030, from 8.4 down to 2.1, and entitlement is set by the factor on the installation date. Why a smaller number is not automatically a worse deal.
Rebates
The installer must be SAA accredited and the battery on the Clean Energy Council list. Buying from a seller signed up to the New Energy Tech Consumer Code, which covers sales tactics, quotes, contracts and warranties, is something you can choose. What is in that code, and why the one protection covering the sale is the one you have to ask for.
Rebates
The federal Cheaper Home Batteries Program and two state schemes only pay for products on the Clean Energy Council’s approved lists, and those lists are dynamic. A suspended or de-listed product stops earning certificates, and eligibility is judged on the installation date rather than the quote date.
Bills
The ABS published the July CPI on 26 August. It attributes the 6.1 per cent annual electricity rise to rebates ending, and the fall from 22.4 per cent to when rebates were paid in 2025. Neither explanation is about the cost of power. In the month itself, measured electricity prices fell 1.6 per cent.
Explainer
We read the AER’s 152 page DMO determination. Customers in apartment blocks, retirement villages and caravan parks are excluded from the definition of a customer, so the Default Market Offer does not apply to them. What does protect them, and the stated intention to bring them in from DMO 9.
Rebates
The Energy Bill Relief Fund ended on 31 December 2025 and no 2026 round has been announced; energy.gov.au now points households to state concession schemes instead. What the credit stream was worth round by round, why the 1 July price cuts do not cover the gap, and the switch the ACCC says is worth $291 a year.
Bills
Benchmark prices fell in NSW, south east Queensland, Victoria and regional Queensland, and rose in SA and WA. There is no national power price, only five different resets under five different laws, and your region's number is in one table with its assumptions shown.
Rebates
Full support stops at the first 14 kWh, 60 per cent carries to 28 kWh and 15 per cent to 50 kWh. What a 13.5, 20, 30 or 45 kWh quote actually gets since 1 May 2026, with the working shown.
Hot water
We downloaded the GEMS register for four product types. Air conditioners carry ten rating fields across 6,062 registrations. Electric and gas water heaters carry none across 2,163, and not one of those is a heat pump. The register is a plain CSV download.
Hot water
Water heating is about a quarter of what a home uses, and the two systems public money pays you to install are the two the rules ask nothing of. No water heater sold here has to carry an Energy Rating Label either.
Rebates
The federal discount applies everywhere, WA and the ACT add real money on top, Victoria tightened its income cap, and several schemes households still read about are closed. We say plainly which state pages we could not verify on publication day.