☀︎SunTariff

Methodology

Where the prices come from

Australia doesn't have one electricity price, or one price-setter. Seven different bodies set or approve the standing prices we publish, each covering its own region:

Each price we show is labelled with the determination it came from and the date it took effect.

How we compute a bill

A bill estimate is built the way your retailer builds one: the daily supply charge for every day in the period, plus each unit of electricity used at the usage rate, with GST included. For the DMO regions, we show the published annual reference figure at the regulator's model usage level. For the Victorian Default Offer and the other state and regional tariffs, we combine the supply and usage components at a stated usage level, and label it as derived at that usage, so you can see the assumption rather than guess at it.

How average bills are derived

The "typical household" figures are estimates, not a survey. We take the Australian Energy Regulator's 2020 residential consumption benchmarks, which break usage down by household size and climate zone, and apply the reference-price components for the relevant area. That is always labelled as a derived estimate. The 2020 benchmarks were the final edition, and they exclude Western Australia and the Northern Territory. So for WA we price a stated usage level, labelled as a stated level rather than an average, and for the NT we use a clearly labelled climate-zone proxy. None of these are presented as measured bills.

Feed-in tariffs

What you're paid to export solar depends entirely on where you live, and the rules fall into four kinds of regime. New South Wales sits under a voluntary benchmark: the pricing regulator publishes a guide range, but retailers aren't required to match it. Victoria, South Australia, south-east Queensland and the ACT are deregulated or retailer-set: retailers decide their own rates, and Victoria has had no government minimum since 1 July 2025. Western Australia (through the DEBS scheme), Tasmania and regional Queensland run a regulator-set rate. The Northern Territory uses Jacana Energy's set buyback rate.

For the deregulated states we don't invent a minimum. Instead, we run a quarterly survey of the main retailers' published solar rates, read from every residential offer they publish on Energy Made Easy, the Australian Energy Regulator's comparison site, and for Victoria on Victorian Energy Compare, and show each retailer's base export rate with the survey date. The base rate is the one most of a retailer's offers pay. We exclude promotional offers that pay a boosted rate on a small first block of exports, since those teasers flatter the headline and don't reflect what most exports earn, and for time-of-use export offers we count the rate a midday export earns, when most solar is exported.

Year-on-year changes and rankings

Where a page compares one year's prices with the year before, it says which basis it uses. For the Default Market Offer networks we compare the AER's published annual reference prices, because the previous offer was set as an annual price only. Where both years' supply and usage rates are published, we rebuild the bill for each year at the same stated usage. Where last year's rates aren't in our dataset, we show the average change published by the price-setter and say so. Rankings between networks price every network at one common annual usage, stated on each page, so a network with a high supply charge and a low usage rate is compared fairly with the reverse.

Solar payback

Solar payback on SunTariff weighs the benefit of a system against its real net cost. The benefit has two parts: the grid electricity you avoid buying by using your own solar as it's generated, valued at your usage tariff, plus what you earn exporting the surplus, valued at your feed-in rate. The net cost is the installed price after the small-scale certificate discount. Dividing one by the other gives an indicative payback period.

Those certificates, created under the Clean Energy Regulator's scheme, are deemed on the years left until the scheme ends in 2030, so their value steps down each year. Australian installers almost always advertise prices with that discount already taken off. Because of that, our "quote already includes the certificate discount" toggle defaults to yes. Subtracting the certificates a second time would double-count them and make solar look cheaper than it really is.

Appliance running costs

Appliance costs use a simple, editable formula: the appliance's power draw, multiplied by how long it runs, multiplied by your tariff. The power figures come in bands drawn from manufacturer specifications and energy-authority guidance, and every input is yours to change, because your model, your habits and your rate all move the answer.

Verification and freshness

Australia resets regulated prices every 1 July, so that's when we re-verify every dataset, and each page shows the date its figures were last checked. Automated tests run on every build: a figure can't publish without a source and a date attached, and a separate check blocks the build if a deregulated state would ever print a "government minimum" feed-in tariff. Some primary sources block automated access, so where a figure had to be confirmed another way it carries a "cross-checked" badge until we re-read it in a real browser. Corrections go to support@inventum.com.au.