Why Your Electricity Bill Went Up in 2026

The federal government's energy bill relief has ended. Households received $300 across 2024–25, applied as four quarterly credits of $75, then a further $150 covering the second half of 2025. From 1 January 2026 there is no credit at all. Source: Energy Bill Relief Fund, energy.gov.au.

That withdrawal is the thing that actually changed, because the underlying regulated price did not go up. In its Default Market Offer 2026–27 final determination, published 26 May 2026 and in effect from 1 July 2026, the AER cut residential standing-offer prices by between 3.4% and 7.7% in New South Wales, and by between 7.2% and 10.7% in south-east Queensland. South Australia moved between a 1.1% cut and a 1.4% rise.

So if your bill reads worse than it did a year ago, the likely reason is not that electricity got dearer. It is that a credit which had been quietly absorbing part of the total stopped arriving, and what is left is the real cost of your plan.

Here's the part that gets less attention: this rebate ending is also exposing how many households were already on uncompetitive plans before the rebate started. The rebate masked the overpayment. Now that it's gone, the actual plan cost is visible, and for a significant share of Australian households, that number was already wrong.

What the Rebate Actually Did

In 2024–25 the federal energy bill relief applied a credit to household electricity bills ($75 per quarter over four quarters, totalling $300) as a direct offset rather than a rate reduction, and the $150 that followed in the second half of 2025 worked the same way. The credit appeared on your bill as a line item. Your usage charges stayed the same. Your plan rates stayed the same. The credit just reduced the total you paid.

This meant the rebate was equally valuable regardless of whether you were on a competitive plan or an uncompetitive one. A household on a plan $400 per year more expensive than the market best got the same $300 credit as a household on the cheapest available plan.

The rebate didn't fix plan competitiveness. It papered over it.

How to Know If You Were Already Overpaying

Your bill contains the answer. Not in the total. In the rates.

Look at the charges section of your electricity bill. You're looking for two figures:

Usage rate (cents per kWh). This is what you're charged for every kilowatt-hour you consume. In most Australian states, competitive market offers range from around 20–33 cents per kWh depending on state and distributor. Default offers, the plans retailers put you on when you stop actively choosing, are priced at or just under the regulator's cap, which is the ceiling rather than the going rate.

Daily supply charge (cents per day). This is what you're charged just for being connected to the grid, regardless of usage. Competitive rates vary by state and distributor, but meaningful differences exist between plans.

A word of caution on what to compare against what. A usage rate can't sit above the reference price, because the reference price isn't a rate: it's an annual dollar amount at a benchmark usage level, set per distribution zone. To place your plan against it you have to apply your rate and supply charge to your own annual usage and compare the annual totals. If you've never done that, that's the signal. You're not necessarily on the worst plan. But you're likely not on the best one either, and post-rebate that gap costs more than it did.

The State Picture in 2026

The rebate exposure is uneven across states because underlying plan competitiveness varies significantly.

New South Wales has the most competitive retail market. The AER sets the reference price as an annual amount against a benchmark usage figure, not as a cents-per-kWh rate. For a residential customer on a flat rate in 2026–27 it is $1,899 a year on 3,900 kWh in the Ausgrid zone, $2,328 on 4,900 kWh in Endeavour, and $2,604 on 4,600 kWh in Essential Energy. Source: Default Market Offer 2026–27 information kit, AER. Households willing to shop around can find plans below those figures. Default offer customers are paying a loyalty penalty on top of the rebate loss.

Victoria operates under a different regulatory structure with the Victorian Default Offer set by the Essential Services Commission. Victorian households should check whether their current plan sits above or below the VDO.

Queensland has a regulated retail electricity market in regional areas and a competitive market in south-east Queensland. If you're outside Energex territory, your options may be more limited.

South Australia is the exception this year. It was the only Default Market Offer region where the residential flat-rate standing offer rose rather than fell, up 1.4% to $2,334 a year on 4,000 kWh, while the time-of-use offer fell 1.1% to $2,276. Every other DMO region fell on both measures. Source: Default Market Offer 2026–27 information kit, AER. South Australian households on a flat-rate standing offer therefore lose the rebate without a regulated price cut to offset it.

Tasmania is supplied through Aurora Energy under a regulated structure. Less market competition, different comparison logic.

The Compounding Problem

The rebate ending is one factor. But for many households it's landing on top of an already uncompetitive plan, and the combination is what produces a bill that suddenly feels impossible.

If you've been on the same plan for more than 12 months and haven't actively shopped around, there's a reasonable probability that:

1. The market has moved past your current rates
2. Any introductory discount you received has expired
3. You're now paying the undiscounted rate on a plan that wasn't competitive even when it was discounted

The ACCC found that customers on plans more than three years old pay an average of $221 a year more than customers on new plans. The figure is about the age of your plan, not about whether you are on a default offer. Source: Inquiry into the National Electricity Market, December 2025 report, ACCC, page 32. That gap predates the rebate ending. Post-rebate, it is now fully visible.

What a Real Comparison Looks Like

Every other comparison site will ask for your postcode and show you a plan list based on a generic usage assumption, usually 3,900 kWh per year for a single-rate household. That assumption may have nothing to do with your household's actual consumption.

We read your bill. Your actual usage figures, your actual tariff rates, your actual billing period. We then run that against every plan available in your postcode through the government's CDR feed.

The result isn't "here are plans cheaper than average." It's "here is how much you would save right now if you moved from your specific current plan to the best available alternative." A real number. Your number.

For households where the rebate ending is the inflection point that finally makes the bill unsustainable, this comparison is worth doing today.

How Quickly Can You Switch

Most Australian electricity customers are not locked into fixed-term contracts. Switching is legally protected, and you cannot be charged an exit fee for leaving a market offer plan.

Once you've identified a better plan and initiated the switch through the new retailer's website, the process typically takes 1–3 business days for the switch to be confirmed and 1–2 billing cycles for the change to be fully reflected. Your current retailer cannot prevent the switch or charge you for initiating it.

The rebate is gone. The market has plans available that could offset that and more, for households currently on uncompetitive rates. The comparison takes less than a minute.

Upload your bill and find out where your household actually sits.

If the jump was sharper than a lost rebate explains, work through the other two causes. My electricity bill doubled is the diagnosis for a bill that went up by a multiple rather than a margin, and electricity bill spike separates a seasonal quarter from a plan problem. To find the rates this guide asks you to look up, how to read your electricity bill points at every line.

Fix Your Bill uses live CDR data updated regularly from the government's Consumer Data Right feed. Plan pricing reflects offers currently available in your area. Seasonal extrapolation adjusts single-bill comparisons to account for the time of year.