What it costs to run
aircon, suburb by suburb

Same cooling job, different network

The clearest way to see it. Each pair below has near-identical measured cooling demand within 2%, and differs only in who supplies the electricity. Pairs are selected by computation, not by hand.

The ten dearest suburbs

The ten cheapest

By state

⚠ Small sample. The Northern Territory and Tasmania have few suburbs above our 8,000-resident threshold, so treat those medians as indicative of the places listed rather than the state.

Method

Every figure is the cooling-only running cost of one typical 3.5kW reverse-cycle split system over a year, in one suburb, on that suburb's network flat rate.

1. Consumption. The federal energy rating scheme registers annual cooling consumption for the same appliance in three Australian reference climates. Those three points give kWh = 111.4 + 1.16 × CDD24, which reproduces each registered figure to within 1% (R² 0.99998). The constant term matters: an air conditioner draws power for standby, fan and part-load cycling regardless of how much cooling it does, so consumption does not fall to zero in a mild climate.
2. Climate. Cooling degree days to a 24°C base, computed from the Bureau of Meteorology's daily record at the station nearest each suburb. Each suburb page names its station.
3. Price. The residential flat rate, including GST, for the distribution network serving that postcode, taken from the Consumer Data Right energy API.

Excluded on purpose: heating, the daily supply charge, time-of-use and controlled-load tariffs, solar self-consumption, and any assumption about how warm you like your house. Those change the number for an individual household but not the comparison between suburbs, which is what this page is for.