Household Electricity Use
Indicator Rationale
Household energy use is a key contributor to green house gas emissions which damages our environment and communities. Increasing energy usage through human activities over the past century is associated with changes to the earth's temperature and has great implications for the environmental, social and economic conditions of communities.
Electricity usage forms the greatest proportion of household energy use nationally with the exception of Victoria where natural gas consumption is higher. A large percentage of Victorian households are connected to natural gas and is commonly used to power heating and it remains the fastest growing form of house energy consumption.
Data Source
The Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment has compiled data from Victorian electricity distributors to provide an overview of residential electricity consumption collated from metered electricity for each of Victoria's Local Government Areas. The methodology for deriving these values transforms postcode level source data provided by distributors into consumption data using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Census and the Victorian Department of Planning and Community Development. A detailed description of the methodology is described here and the Department of Sustainability and Environment cautions users when using these statistics.
Measure
Consumption of electricity per household in megawatts/hour
The statistics derived to produce the indicator are experimental in nature and extreme care should be exercised when using these estimates. Data issues relate to spatial error, definitions of tariffs and classes, negative consumption and seasonality. More detail is provided on the DSE website.
References
