Home Energy Systems near you

Victoria is the clearest case of policy arriving ahead of households. Solar Victoria states that from 1 January 2024, planning permits for new homes and residential subdivisions will only connect to all-electric networks, and that the requirement applies to all new homes requiring a planning permit, including new public and social housing delivered by Homes Victoria. The change is directed at new construction rather than at anyone's existing house.

So if you are building, or buying off the plan in Victoria, the question of whether to install gas has been decided for you and the design conversation moves straight to which electric appliances and how they are controlled. If you are living in an existing Victorian house, nothing compels you to change anything, and the same is broadly true elsewhere in the country, though states differ and the direction of travel is not uniform.

The reason it matters even to owners outside Victoria is resale and servicing. A jurisdiction that has stopped connecting new housing to gas is a jurisdiction where the gas network's customer base stops growing, which over time affects what it costs to be on it and how easy it is to get an appliance serviced. That is a reason to think about the sequence now rather than to panic about it.

The honest comparison is not appliance against appliance, it is total household cost including both daily supply charges. A house with one gas appliance left pays the full gas daily charge for the privilege, and that charge is fixed regardless of how little gas flows through the meter. This is why partial electrification so often disappoints: the variable cost falls and the fixed cost does not move at all.

The counter-argument is real in some cases. Households with an existing gas appliance that still has years of life in it, cooks who strongly prefer gas, and houses where the switchboard or supply cannot yet carry the electric replacements all have reasons to wait. So do households facing a large upfront outlay with a short remaining stay in the property.

The decision that almost always makes sense regardless is to stop installing new gas. When an appliance fails, replacing it with another gas unit commits you to the connection for another decade or more. Deciding the replacement in advance, while the old unit still works, is how households avoid making that choice under pressure on the coldest morning of the year.

Solar generation peaks in the middle of the day and across the summer months of December to February, while the largest heating loads land in June to August in the southern states. That mismatch is the central seasonal problem, and it is why timing flexible loads matters more in Australia than adding capacity. Running the hot water heat pump at midday rather than overnight is the single cheapest change most households can make.

Summer brings the opposite problem: abundant generation and a cooling load that peaks in the late afternoon, after the array has begun to fall away. Pre-cooling the house while the sun is still producing, then letting a well-sealed and shaded house coast through the evening, uses generation that would otherwise be exported for very little.

In the tropical north the pattern changes again, with a wet season that flattens generation for weeks at a time and a humidity load that does not switch off. A system designed for a Melbourne winter and a system designed for a Darwin wet are not the same design, which is why local advice beats generic advice on this subject more than on almost any other.