Why NSW homes need better electric
If you’ve seen energy campaigns out of Victoria telling households to ditch gas heaters and gas hot water systems for electric alternatives, you might assume the same advice applies here in New South Wales. It doesn’t, at least not in the same way. We will be understanding why in this blog.
NSW is already an electric state
Here’s the fact most bill-reduction advice misses: more than half of NSW households, around 58%, aren’t connected to mains gas at all. They’re already fully electric. Compare that to Victoria, where roughly 80% of homes are connected to gas, and gas has traditionally supplied the bulk of home heating and hot water. Victoria’s energy transition story is genuinely about switching fuels, from gas appliances to electric ones.
NSW’s story is different. Electricity already dominates household energy use here, making up an estimated 65% of the average home’s energy consumption, with gas contributing around 30% and LPG or wood making up the remainder. Victoria, by contrast, uses roughly 65% of the nation’s entire residential gas supply despite having only about a quarter of Australia’s population, that’s how gas-heavy their homes are, and how electric-heavy ours already are by comparison.
So when a NSW household turns on their ducted reverse-cycle system, their electric storage hot water unit, or their electric cooktop, they’re not part of some future fuel switch. They’re already living the “electric home” that other states are being encouraged to move toward. The opportunity in NSW isn’t conversion, it’s efficiency.
Where your bill is actually going
To understand where the savings are hiding, it helps to know how the average NSW household’s annual energy use breaks down:
- Heating and cooling: ~38% by far the single biggest chunk of the bill
- Hot water: ~30%
- Appliances (fridges, TVs, general electronics): ~25%
- Lighting: ~7%
- Cooking: ~5%
Notice that heating/cooling and hot water together account for nearly two-thirds of the average bill. These are also the two end-uses where equipment efficiency varies the most. A 15-year-old electric resistance hot water tank and an ageing split-system air conditioner can use two to four times more electricity than a modern, correctly sized heat pump or reverse-cycle unit doing the exact same job. Because NSW homes are already drawing this energy from the grid rather than a gas line, every efficiency gain shows up directly as lower electricity use, not a fuel-switching cost, just a straightforward equipment upgrade.
Hot water Heat Pump upgrade
Hot water is the second-biggest energy cost in most NSW homes, and it’s also one of the most overlooked upgrades, most people don’t think about their hot water system until it fails, then they replace it like-for-like under time pressure. Heat pump hot water systems extract heat from the surrounding air instead of generating it directly, which means they typically use three to four times less electricity than a standard electric resistive system to heat the same amount of water. For a household already paying for that hot water through electricity, this is one of the most direct bill reductions available, with no fuel conversion required.
Home heating upgrade
Space heating and cooling makes up the largest single slice of the average NSW energy bill, and the equipment doing that work has improved dramatically over the last decade. Older electric resistance heaters and inefficient or oversized air conditioning units can cost significantly more to run than a modern reverse-cycle system with a good energy star rating.
Because NSW’s climate is more temperate than Victoria’s or Tasmania’s, the heating and cooling load per home is lower to begin with, which means the relative impact of switching to an efficient system is proportionally larger. Upgrading here isn’t about adopting electric heating for the first time; it’s about replacing inefficient electric heating with efficient electric heating.
In NSW, you can install single split systems with no current heating or cooling system currently install, or replace inefficient heating systems.
Why this distinction actually matters
It’s tempting to borrow the electrification message that’s worked well interstate, “switch from gas, save money, cut emissions.” But applying that message wholesale to NSW risks talking past most of the audience. If you tell a household that’s never had a gas connection to “switch to electric,” the message simply doesn’t land, because there’s nothing to switch. Worse, it can create the impression that electrification programs aren’t relevant to them, when in fact they’re one of the best-positioned households in the country to benefit from an efficiency upgrade, they’re already paying the electricity price for heating, cooling and hot water; they just may be paying more than they need to for it.
The right framing for NSW is simpler and, frankly, an easier sell: you’re already electric, let’s make your electric appliances efficient. No new wiring for gas disconnection, no fuel-switching decision to weigh up, no changed cooking habits. Just a straightforward swap of an old, energy-hungry unit for a modern one that does the same job on a fraction of the power.
Have you heard of HESP?
Home Energy Saver Program (HESP) helps lower the upfront cost of these technologies, making energy saving upgrades possible for eligible households.
You could be eligible to get a zero-interest loan of up to $15,000 to make your house or apartment cheaper to run and more comfortable to live in.
What this means for your bill
Given that heating/cooling and hot water combine for close to 70% of the average NSW household’s energy use, and given that NSW homes are drawing that usage almost entirely from the grid already, upgrading these two systems is the highest-leverage change most households can make. It’s not a lifestyle change, a renovation, or a multi-year payback horizon, it’s replacing two specific, identifiable pieces of equipment that are quietly costing more than they should.
If you are looking to save on your energy bills and upgrade your heating/cooling system and your hot water system, reach out to Emerald and we can assist you.