What do the DMO and VDO decisions mean for business electricity?

They move a ceiling, not your price. The Default Market Offer and the Victorian Default Offer set the most a retailer may charge a small business sitting on a standing offer, and they set the reference price that retailers must compare their advertised plans against.

Which means a determination can cut that ceiling by double digits and change your bill by nothing at all, because the ceiling was never what you were paying. Whether it touches your business turns on one question that most businesses have never checked: are you on a standing offer, or on a market offer.

Which decisions this page covers

The 2026-27 determinations, all of which took effect on 1 July 2026 and run to 30 June 2027:

• the Australian Energy Regulator's Default Market Offer for 2026-27, known as DMO 8, final determination published 26 May 2026
• the Essential Services Commission's Victorian Default Offer price determination for 2026-27, published 20 May 2026
• the Queensland Competition Authority's notified prices for regional Queensland for 2026-27, final determination published 5 June 2026

We rewrite this page each year when the next set lands, which is May and June. A page about a superseded decision is worse than no page, so the year it covers is stated at the top rather than buried. Every figure below is a regulator's own published number, cited to the body that decided it. None of them are ours.

What is the DMO and does it apply to my business?

The Default Market Offer is the maximum price a retailer may charge a residential or small business customer on a standing offer contract. The Australian Energy Regulator sets it annually, and the annual price is locked in for twelve months from 1 July.

It applies in New South Wales, South East Queensland and South Australia, and it does two jobs. It caps what you can be charged if you have never signed up to anything. It is also the reference price retailers are obliged to compare their plans against in advertising, which is why plan marketing quotes a percentage off a number you may never have seen.

What it is not is a good price. The regulator's own information kit puts it plainly: as the standing offer, the DMO may not be the best retail offer available.

What is the VDO and how does it differ from the DMO?

Victoria runs its own scheme. The Victorian Default Offer is set by the Essential Services Commission, does the same two jobs of capping standing offers and acting as a reference price, and runs on the same 1 July to 30 June cycle.

Three differences matter for a business. Victoria defines a small business customer as one consuming less than 40 MWh a year, a lower line than several other jurisdictions draw. The commission publishes its tariffs inclusive of GST, so a Victorian figure lifted straight off the determination is not on the same basis as an ex-GST rate. And the VDO is a hard cap for roughly 182,000 embedded network customers who cannot choose their own retailer, which is the position of a business trading inside a shopping centre, a retirement village or a caravan park.

Where the default price comes from, state by state

Five arrangements, not one. Which covers your site depends on where the meter is, not where the business is registered.

New South Wales, South East Queensland and South Australia. The AER's Default Market Offer, reset annually.

Victoria. The Essential Services Commission's Victorian Default Offer, reset annually.

Regional Queensland. Notified prices set by the Queensland Competition Authority under a delegation from the state Minister, and capped by the South East Queensland DMO. The default tariff for small business customers is tariff 20.

Tasmania. Standing offer prices approved by the Tasmanian Economic Regulator for the state's regulated offer retailer, with small business customers being those using less than 150 MWh a year.

Australian Capital Territory. Standing offer prices under a price direction from the Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission covering 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2027, for small customers consuming less than 100 MWh over any twelve consecutive months. It is adjusted annually rather than redetermined, so the ACT does not get a fresh headline decision every May.

Notice that the small business line itself moves: less than 40 MWh in Victoria, less than 100 MWh in the ACT, less than 150 MWh in Tasmania. The same site can be a small customer in one jurisdiction and a large one in another, which is a live problem for a business with sites in more than one state.

The 2026-27 numbers, as the regulators published them

Down, and further for business than for households in every region that reported both.

Under DMO 8, combining flat rate and time of use standing offers, small business prices fell by 9.0% to 20.9% in New South Wales, by 10.4% to 14.0% in South East Queensland and by 6.8% to 12.1% in South Australia. Residential prices over the same range fell 3.4% to 7.7% in New South Wales and 7.2% to 10.7% in South East Queensland, and in South Australia ran from a 1.1% decrease to a 1.4% increase. The AER notes these are nominal comparisons, and that the reductions are larger in real terms once forecast inflation is taken out.

In Victoria the average small business VDO bill fell 6%, against 5% for households. Across the five distribution zones the small business change ran from 4% in the Powercor zone to 11% in the AusNet Services zone, which is a wide spread for one state and one customer class.

In regional Queensland the typical small business customer on tariff 20 came down 8.1%, against 6.9% for the typical residential customer on tariff 11.

Why did business prices fall further than household prices?

Mostly because of a methodology change, not because the market turned generous.

In DMO 8 the AER aligned the retail margin used for small business with the residential margin of 6%. Its own summary attributes the small business movement to that alignment plus the cumulative effect of other methodology changes and year on year cost movements. Business had been carrying a different margin assumption, and closing the gap moved business prices more than residential ones.

Regional Queensland got there by a different route. The QCA compared its notified price bills against the South East Queensland DMO reference bills, found the notified bills exceeded the cap, and cut its standing offer adjustment from 3.09% to minus 10.69% for small business tariffs, against minus 1.74% for residential. The business reduction was the cap being enforced.

Does a lower default price mean my business is paying less?

Only if you are on a standing offer. If you are on a market offer, a lower default changes the ceiling above your head and the number in the advertising, and leaves your rates exactly where they were.

That cuts the other way too, and it is the part worth sitting with. A business on a market offer signed three years ago can read a headline about business electricity falling by a fifth and conclude everything is fine, while its own plan has quietly rolled onto whatever the retailer moved it to at the end of the term. The determination says nothing about that plan. Only the plan says anything about that plan.

Am I on a standing offer without knowing it?

Possibly, and businesses are markedly more likely to be than households. In the DMO regions the AER reports 8% of households and 15% of small businesses still on the standing offer. In Victoria the commission reports roughly 17% of households and 21% of small businesses on the VDO.

Roughly one small business in six or seven is paying a regulated ceiling rather than a competitive price. Nobody chooses that. It is where you end up by never signing anything, by a contract term expiring, or by taking over premises and inheriting whatever account was there. The bill will not announce it in those words, so how to read a business electricity bill is the faster way to find out which one you hold.

Why do we not publish the dollar figures from these determinations?

Because each one is a correct number about a modelled customer and not a number about your site, and printing it here would invite you to treat it as a quote.

Every annual price in these determinations is calculated at one stated usage in one distribution zone. The AER describes its annual price as what a customer would spend in a year at an average annual level of household or small business consumption. The Victorian package makes the point even more sharply: its published zone comparisons for small business assume 10,000 kWh a year, while the compliant maximum annual bill amounts in the determination itself use an annual reference consumption of 20,000 kWh. Same determination, same customer class, double the usage.

The bases differ too. Victoria publishes inclusive of GST. Queensland's notified prices are published exclusive of GST, and the QCA had to adjust for differences in the treatment of GST and consumption levels before it could compare its own prices with the DMO at all. When a regulator needs a basis adjustment to compare two published figures, two figures read off two websites are not comparable either.

So we publish the percentages, because those are each regulator's own summary of its own decision, and we leave the dollars to your bill. We anchor rates ex-GST from the Consumer Data Right register, apply GST once at the annual total, and treat the GST line on your own bill as the authority on your site.

What should a business do when a new decision lands?

Four things, and none of them take long.

Work out which regime covers your meter, using the list above. A business with sites in two states is under two decisions with two different small business thresholds.

Check whether you are on a standing offer or a market offer. This is the only question that decides whether the decision touches you.

Ignore the percentage and price the plan. A headline change is a change in a reference price. What you want is the projected annual cost of the plans actually available to your site, on your own usage, which is a different number and the only one you can act on.

Look at the whole bill, not the usage rate. If your site carries a demand or capacity line, that line can be worth more than the rate you are negotiating. Demand charges explained covers how it is calculated, and electricity tariffs explained covers why two plans with the same headline rate can land a long way apart.

Compare it against your own bill

A determination tells you what the ceiling is. Your bill tells you what you are paying. Only one of those is worth acting on.

Upload your business bill and our secure bill-reading engine reads your usage, your tariff and your network, then projects every published plan available to your site onto that usage and ranks them by projected annual cost. If your current plan is already the best of them, the list says so and you have lost a minute. The wider picture of what changes on a business account is at business electricity plans.