For two and a half years, a federal credit landed on Australian electricity bills without anyone having to apply for it. That stream has stopped, and it stopped quietly: no closing announcement most households would have seen, just a line added to the Energy Bill Relief Fund page on energy.gov.au that reads, in full, "The Energy Bill Relief Fund ended on 31 December 2025." The page's next move is to send you elsewhere: "check your eligibility for existing state and territory rebates schemes."
That matters now, six months later, for a plain billing reason. The final round was paid as two $75 quarterly credits between 1 July and 31 December 2025, applied automatically by retailers. Every quarterly bill issued since covers usage with no federal credit against it, and winter, the highest-usage quarter for most households, is the first since the fund began in July 2023 being billed entirely without one.
What the stream was actually worth
The fund ran three rounds, and they were not the same size or shape. The government's own summary table on the scheme page sets them out:
The federal bill credit, round by round, per household
| Round | Who got it | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| 2023–24 (1 Jul 2023 – 30 Jun 2024) | Concession and family-payment households only | $175–$250 |
| 2024–25 expansion (1 Jul 2024 – 30 Jun 2025) | Every household with an electricity account | $300 |
| 2025 extension (1 Jul 2025 – 31 Dec 2025) | Every household with an electricity account | $150 |
| From 1 January 2026 | No federal round announced | $0 |
Source: energy.gov.au, Energy Bill Relief Fund page, Table 1, read 8 July 2026. Eligible small businesses received $325 in 2024–25 and $150 in the 2025 extension. The 2025 extension was funded as a $1.8 billion measure in the 2025–26 Budget; credits were applied automatically in two $75 quarterly instalments.
So a household that took the full universal rounds received $300 across 2024–25 and $150 across the second half of 2025, and has received nothing since. As at publication there is no announced 2026 round, federal or otherwise; the scheme page offers only the state concession referral. The absence was foreshadowed in an official document most households will never read: the ACCC's December 2025 electricity market report notes, in passing, that "recent government announcements indicate rebates will not continue into 2026."
Why "prices fell on 1 July" does not mean your bill did
The timing is awkward. The credit left bills in the same year the ACCC's December 2025 market monitoring report found calculated retail prices rose 6 per cent overall for residential customers in 2025, led by an 8.8 per cent rise in NSW. And the ACCC's price series deliberately excludes rebates: as its report puts it, many customers "will have received reductions in their actual bills once recent governments rebates were taken into account". In other words, the credit was masking part of a real price rise while it lasted, and the mask is now off.
The 1 July 2026 benchmark resets cut regulated prices in most eastern regions, but the dollar amounts are smaller than the credit that left. The deepest cut in the AER's DMO determination is $155 a year, in south east Queensland; Sydney's Ausgrid region gets $66, Victoria's average default offer falls $84, and South Australia's benchmark rose $33. Set those against a credit stream that was running at $300 a year in 2024–25, and the arithmetic is one-directional: for a household on or near the benchmark price, the federal money that has left the bill exceeds the regulated price relief that has arrived on it, in every region.
What is still there, and what you can still do
Two things remain. The first is targeted rather than universal: state and territory rebate and concession schemes, most of which require a concession card or government payment, exactly the shape the federal scheme had in its first year before the 2024–25 round made it universal. Whether you qualify depends on your state and your card, not your electricity account.
The second is the one lever every household holds. The same ACCC report found 36.5 per cent of customers on market offers, nearly 2.5 million households, are paying at or above the regulator's default offer, and that residential customers who acted on the "better offer" message retailers must print on bills were quoted an average saving of $291 a year just for switching to their own retailer's cheaper plan. That figure is nearly double the $150 the federal government paid out last year, and unlike the rebate, it recurs. The government comparison sites, Energy Made Easy (NSW, Queensland, SA, Tasmania, ACT) and Victorian Energy Compare, are free and pay no commissions.
The federal credit was never designed as a permanent feature; each round was a budget measure with an end date printed on it. But it ended without a successor at a moment when prices were rising, and the practical consequence for a household is simple: the help is no longer automatic. What is left has to be claimed, or found on your own bill's fine print.