According to Canstar Blue, the average four-person household in Australia pays around $1,680 each year to use something like 4,000 kWh of electricity.
Of course, your household consumption and bills can vary greatly from that average for many reasons, including where you live – electricity is cheaper in Victoria than it is in South Australia, for example, while homes in areas that get very hot or extremely cold use more energy for heating and cooling – and how careful you are about what electricity-consuming appliances are switched on when.
Then, of course, we have one-person, two-person, three-person, five-person and more people-filled households, and homes with pools and those with multiple bathrooms and others with theatre rooms, and so on. But we need some sort of “benchmark” as a starting point, so let’s go with an “average” four-person household.
Which brings us to the question: as Australians, are we really getting a “reasonable” return for the $25–$35 a week we spend on electricity? For perspective, a 2017 Bureau of Statistics study estimated the average household spends about $44 a week on fashion and clothing, or $32 a week on alcohol.
Electricity, however, is far more fundamental to our quality of life—so essential that we often take it for granted. Australia also operates one of the world’s largest electricity grids relative to its customer base. That’s because our population is spread across such a vast country. When you consider the immense cost of generating power, maintaining infrastructure, and stretching thousands of kilometres of poles and wires, the scale is humbling.
Do we ever pause to reflect on just how much we rely on electricity to sustain our modern lifestyles? And is it possible that we underestimate the true value it contributes to our daily comfort and convenience?
The biggest energy consumers
The three biggest energy consumers in most households are heating and cooling systems, hot water services, and refrigerators and freezers. It’s hard to imagine living without any of those.
Typically, heating in winter and cooling in summer accounts for around 40% of a household’s energy usage (of course, with major variations according to climate), having hot water on tap can account for 25% of your annual bills, while the fridge is responsible for something like 7% of the energy you use.
As hot water and heating might use gas, let’s take the fridge as an example of an electricity-powered appliance that you’ll find in every home.
Something like seven out of every 100 dollars you spend on electricity pays for this necessary appliance that’s keeping your food and drinks cold, so things stay fresh for longer and are right there whenever you need them. Doing the maths, if you are paying that “average’ of $1,680 per year, around $100-120 of that is being used by your fridge, which operates 24/7.
How many electrical appliances or devices do you have?
There wouldn’t be too many households, regardless of the number of residents, with fewer than 20 appliances or devices powered by electricity or with batteries that need electricity to charge.
In your kitchen alone you’ll likely find at least half a dozen, including that fridge, an oven, a cooktop, rangehood, microwave, mixer, juicer, toaster, and kettle, and possibly a dishwasher, sandwich press, coffee machine, air fryer, slow cooker.
You probably have a washing machine, vacuum cleaner, at least one television, and an internet router. You might have a desktop computer, dedicated gaming computer, laptop, tablet, or gaming console.
Then there are lights and lamps, maybe a ceiling fan or two, the air-conditioning unit, possibly a printer in the home office, probably a couple of power tools in the garage or shed, and don’t forget all those little things like electric toothbrushes.
Some of those devices or appliances use very little electricity, but without electricity they’re redundant.
Imagine a family home with no entertainment devices
Could your family go without an internet connection? If you’re paying something like $80 a month for home internet, how would you weigh up the $3 or $4 worth of electricity the router is using? And if you’re subscribed to just one streaming service, are you baulking at that cost?
Look at it this way: if your basic set-up is costing you about $100, less than 4% of the cost of your entertainment “package” goes to the electricity that makes the rest of it work. And, if you also have an Xbox or other games console and use more than one streaming service, the cost of the electricity required doesn’t change very much, so it represents an even smaller percentage of the total spend.
If your family includes someone who enjoys online gaming with a dedicated PC, you might be surprised to learn that could be using anywhere between 10 and 20 cents worth of electricity per hour. That means if it’s in use for an average of 40 hours a week, it will cost between $200 and $400 a year to run. Mind you, a high-end, high-spec system could use as much as twice that amount again.
On the other hand, if you’re not gaming or streaming and don’t have home internet, you might be watching a bit more free-to-air TV, which comes at a small electricity cost that also adds up over a year.
For example, a typical 55-inch LED TV might use 80 watts, or 0.08 kW per hour. If you use the TV for six hours a day, that’s just under 0.5 kWh, so around 15 cents per day. If you average six hours a day, that adds up to around $50 per TV per year. Of course, bigger screens and other operating systems, such as OLED, will consume different amounts of electricity.
Just going about the household chores
Your washing machine might use a lot less electricity than your friend’s or neighbour’s one, or vice versa. This is one major appliance for which the Energy Star rating makes a significant difference.
For example, an energy-efficient front-loading machine can cost as little as $30 annually, while older, less efficient top-loading machines can cost between $140 and $180 per year. Imagine saving over $100 a year by upgrading your machine.
If you use a dishwasher four times a week, a 2-star model will use around $75 worth of electricity a year, while a 3.5-star machine will cut that cost nearly in half, to around $40 a year.
An electric cooktop uses between 1,200 and 3,000 watts per burner when active, meaning a typical cooking session might use between 2 and 5 kWh (this varies greatly based on cooking habits). So, let’s just say that you probably spend about $1 each time you use the cooktop, meaning if you average three meals a week, that’s around $150 a year. By the way, a rangehood adds about 5 cents per hour of use.
An electric oven might also be around 3,000 watts, so that’ll cost less than 50 cents an hour to operate. If you were to use the oven for six hours a week, that’ll also round out at around $150 a year.
Ever wondered how efficient it is to cook in a microwave oven? If you use a powerful 1,200-watt microwave for an average of 15 minutes per day, that adds up to around $35 or $40 per year.
Breaking it down brings some clarity
When we look at a monthly electricity bill, very few of us break it down to think about how much it costs to run each device or appliance that we absolutely rely on and couldn’t do without.
Based on the calculations we’ve been doing in this article, here are a few of those things at a glance:
| Appliance/Device | Monthly | Annually |
| Refrigerator | $10 | $120 |
| Electric cooktop | $12.50 | $150 |
| Electric oven | $12.50 | $150 |
| Microwave oven | $3 | $35-$40 |
| Dishwasher | $3-$6 | $40-$75 |
| Washing machine | $2.50-$15 | $30-$180 |
| Television | $4 | $48 |
| Internet router | $4 | $48 |
| Gaming PC | $17-$35 | $200-$400 |
When you’re also boiling the kettle, charging your phone, making a toastie, and switching on some lights every day for a few cents or, in the case of charging your phone, fractions of a cent each time, it’s pretty clear that you’re getting a lot of comfort, convenience, and value from that steady flow of electricity to your home.
As a society, we’ve become accustomed to having more and more things that plug in, but we might not realise that even as we add more devices and appliances to our “collection”, the latest versions are generally a lot more energy efficient. If your electricity bills are increasing more than a little, it’s possible that among the culprits are any older appliances that don’t have the Energy Star ratings of newer ones.
If you’d like to read a bit more about saving energy and reducing bills, here are some of our recent articles:
40 energy-saving techniques and technologies you need to know
How technology is making it easier to use less energy
Tips everyone should be following to use less energy
7 super simple tips for saving energy at home this winter