Business electricity in New South Wales
New South Wales has the largest electricity market in Australia by volume, and the most business sites of any state. Your site sits in one of three distribution networks, and which one you are in — not which retailer you choose — determines the network charges that make up a large share of your bill.
Retailers in NSW buy electricity in the National Electricity Market and compete on the retail margin, not on the network charges, which are regulated and identical for every retailer serving your site.
- Wholesale market
- National Electricity Market (NEM)
- Network operators
- Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy, Essential Energy
Who runs the network in NSW
Ausgrid operates the network across Sydney's inner and northern suburbs, the Central Coast and the Hunter. Endeavour Energy covers western Sydney, the Blue Mountains, the Illawarra and the South Coast. Essential Energy covers the rest of the state, including regional and rural NSW — the largest network area in the state by geography.
Your site is connected to exactly one of these networks. That determines the network tariff code applied to your meter, and it is the single most important input when comparing plans.
What changes when you switch retailer in NSW
The poles and wires stay the same. When you change retailer, the only thing that changes is who bills you for the energy and the retail services; the network charges on your bill are set by the distributor and passed through unchanged.
That is why a plan comparison has to start from your meter's network tariff. Two sites in the same suburb can be on different network tariffs — for example a general supply tariff versus a low-voltage demand tariff — and the wrong assumption can make an apparently cheaper plan more expensive in practice.
How to compare plans in NSW
Start from a recent electricity bill for the site you want to compare. The bill gives us the usage, the billing period and the network tariff that a comparison for a New South Wales site needs in order to reflect how you are actually charged.
Upload a bill and compare business electricity plans — free, and it takes about a minute. New to all this? Start with how to read a business electricity bill or browse the full set of business electricity guides.