Business electricity plans in Victoria, compared on your actual bill

Upload a recent Victorian business electricity bill and we read the usage, tariff structure and rates printed on it, then price the published plans available at your site against those numbers and rank them by projected annual cost. No phone call, no callback, no panel.

What follows is the part that is specific to Victoria, which has its own regulator, its own default price and its own definition of a small business. Everything about how a business bill differs from a household one holds wherever you trade, and it is on business electricity plans.

Who sets the default electricity price for a Victorian small business?

The Essential Services Commission, through the Victorian Default Offer. Victoria sits outside the national Default Market Offer entirely: the VDO is made under a Victorian pricing order rather than by the Australian Energy Regulator, and it sets the maximum price a retailer may charge for electricity sold to domestic and small business customers on a standing offer. A determination applies from each 1 July to the following 30 June.

The VDO does a second job the national cap does not. It also serves as the benchmark price that retailers must compare their market offers against when advertising, which is why Victorian energy marketing quotes a percentage against the VDO rather than a plain rate. That comparison is a real disclosure and it is worth reading, but it compares a plan to a regulated default rather than to the other plans available to you, so a plan can be well below the VDO and still not be the cheapest option for your site.

Which electricity network is my Victorian business behind?

One of five distribution zones, set by your address rather than by your retailer: AusNet Services, CitiPower, Jemena, Powercor and United Energy.

The zone matters because the network sets the tariff assigned to your site, and the tariff decides whether you are charged for demand, what your time-of-use windows are, and how your supply charge is structured. A café in the CBD and a café in Traralgon are behind different distributors and can pay differently on identical usage, before any question of which retailer they chose. Your bill names your distributor.

Am I a small business electricity customer in Victoria?

Victoria draws the line at 40 megawatt hours a year, which is 40,000 kilowatt hours. For the purposes of the Victorian Default Offer a small business customer is one who is not a domestic customer and whose aggregate electricity consumption is not more than that.

This is the state difference most likely to catch out a business with sites in more than one state, because New South Wales and Queensland both draw their line at 100 megawatt hours. The same consumption that leaves a site comfortably inside the small customer definition in Sydney can put it outside the Victorian one. If your Victorian site is near the line, the classification decides whether you are buying published plans at all, so it is worth confirming with your retailer rather than assuming.

Do Victorian business plans use time-of-use windows?

Many do, and Victoria is unusual in that the regulator publishes the window itself. The two-period time-of-use tariff for small business customers in the Victorian Default Offer determination for 2026 to 2027 defines peak as 9am to 9pm on weekdays, with off-peak covering all other times.

That is a twelve hour peak spanning the entire working day, which is a demanding shape for a business that trades in business hours, and it is a useful thing to know before assuming a time-of-use plan will suit you. It is also only the regulated default. Market offers and network tariffs across the five zones define their own windows, and yours is fixed by the tariff code on your bill rather than by the VDO. What the split does to your annual total, with the arithmetic worked, is at how business time-of-use windows change your annual cost.

Is there a Victorian concession or rebate for business electricity?

Not a concession. Victorian energy concessions are household measures, tied to concession cards and domestic mains usage, and they do not extend to a business account.

The Victorian scheme aimed at businesses is Victorian Energy Upgrades, which offers discounts on approved energy-efficient equipment and is regulated by the same body that sets the VDO, the Essential Services Commission. It reduces what your equipment consumes rather than what you pay per unit, so it sits alongside a plan comparison rather than instead of one.

What is the same wherever your business is?

Most of it. Business plans are published as separate products from household ones, business sites are more often placed on a tariff that charges for demand as well as usage, and business rates are usually quoted without GST. None of that changes at a state border.

The full treatment is on business electricity plans. If the bill in front of you is the puzzle, how to read a business electricity bill walks it line by line. If there is a line priced in kW or kVA, demand charges explained is the page for it.

Start with the bill

Upload your Victorian business electricity bill and the engine prices the published plans available at your site against your own usage, tariff and demand, and ranks them by projected annual cost with the workings shown. Estimates, not quotes.