Benchmark templates
What a benchmark template is
Section titled “What a benchmark template is”On the cost-centre sets page you can start a new set from a benchmark instead of an empty list. Pick 3, 4 or 5 bedrooms and SILWise creates a set with the usual twelve lines, plus Internet, and three of them already have a dollar figure in the box: Electricity, Water and Internet.
It exists for one situation: you are setting up your first house, you do not have last year’s bills in front of you, and a blank box is stopping you from seeing a number at all. A template gets you to a working calculation in one click.
These are not your bills
Section titled “These are not your bills”Read this part twice, because it is the whole caveat.
The figures are a national reference built from published regulator prices. They are not an average of what providers actually pay, and they are not what your house costs. Two things in particular push them high:
- The electricity figures use the Default Market Offer and Victorian Default Offer. Those are price caps - the safety net a retailer may charge someone who has never shopped around. Most households are on a market offer below the cap.
- The water figure is the whole property bill, including the fixed service charges. If you rent the house, the owner normally pays those (see below).
Replace each figure with your own invoice as soon as you have one. A template is a starting point, not an answer, and SILWise does not update or re-apply it later - once the set exists it is yours, and editing it is the same as editing any other set.
The four utility lines
Section titled “The four utility lines”All figures are per house per 90 days, which is the unit SILWise stores shared costs in. Annual figures were divided by 365/90 and rounded to the nearest dollar.
| Line | 3 bedrooms | 4 bedrooms | 5 bedrooms |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity | $682 | $761 | $906 |
| Water | $354 | $376 | $384 |
| Internet | $278 | $278 | $278 |
| Gas | blank | blank | blank |
Two of these barely move as the house fills up, and that surprises people. Only electricity really scales with the number of participants. Water rises about 9% from three people to five, because most of a water bill is a fixed service charge that does not care who lives there. Internet does not move at all. Both are explained below.
Electricity
Section titled “Electricity”Two published sets of figures are combined:
- How much a household uses. The Australian Energy Regulator publishes residential consumption benchmarks by household size - these are the comparison figures your retailer must print on every electricity bill. A 3-person household in urban Sydney benchmarks at 6,361 kWh a year, a 4-person household at 7,311 kWh, and a 5-person household at 9,008 kWh.
- What a unit costs. The AER’s Default Market Offer sets the maximum price for standing-offer customers in NSW, south-east Queensland and South Australia. Victoria’s equivalent is the Essential Services Commission’s Victorian Default Offer. Both were published in May 2026 and apply from 1 July 2026.
Multiplying one by the other gives an annual bill for each of the six regulated regions. The template uses the average across all six. The spread is wide, so it is worth knowing which side of it you sit on:
| Region | 3 people | 4 people | 5 people |
|---|---|---|---|
| Melbourne (Victorian Default Offer) | $2,019 | $2,309 | $2,924 |
| South-east Queensland (Energex) | $2,579 | $2,845 | $3,320 |
| Sydney (Ausgrid) | $2,715 | $3,029 | $3,592 |
| Western Sydney (Endeavour) | $2,821 | $3,142 | $3,714 |
| Regional NSW (Essential) | $3,220 | $3,553 | $4,147 |
| Adelaide (SA Power Networks) | $3,243 | $3,642 | $4,353 |
| Template figure (average) | $2,766 | $3,087 | $3,675 |
A Melbourne house is roughly a third cheaper than the template suggests; a regional NSW or Adelaide house is meaningfully dearer. Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory have their own regulated tariffs and are not in the average - providers there should expect to adjust.
Sources: AER Default market offer 2026-27 final determination (26 May 2026) · AER residential energy consumption benchmarks · ESC Victorian Default Offer 2026-27
Sydney Water’s published 2026-27 price list is the price basis: a water service charge of $26.65 a quarter, a wastewater service charge of $189.88 a quarter, and water usage at $3.41 a kilolitre. Water supply is GST-free. Stormwater is left out, because it only applies in some areas and Sydney Water’s own “typical” bill excludes it.
For how much a house uses, Sydney Water publishes daily water targets by the number of people in the home, in four seasonal tables. Taking a medium property of 501 to 700 square metres and averaging the four seasons:
| People | Litres a day | Kilolitres a year | Usage cost | Full bill |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 457.5 | 167.0 | $140 a quarter | $354 a quarter |
| 4 | 527.8 | 192.6 | $162 a quarter | $376 a quarter |
| 5 | 556.8 | 203.2 | $171 a quarter | $384 a quarter |
Water use does not double when the house does. Five people use only 22% more water than three, not 67% more, because outdoor use - garden, lawn, car washing - barely changes with headcount. And because $216.53 of every quarterly bill is a fixed charge regardless, the bill rises less again: about 9% from three people to five. If you are used to thinking of utilities as “cost per person times people”, water is the line that breaks the rule.
One caveat to hold onto: these are Sydney Water’s water efficiency targets, meaning what a house with a water-saving showerhead, dual-flush toilet and front-loading washing machine uses. An older house without those will run above the target, so treat this figure as a floor rather than a middle.
One thing to check before you use this number. A water bill splits into fixed service charges and usage, and in a rental those are not paid by the same person. In NSW the landlord must pay all water and sewerage service charges, and can only pass on usage charges when the property is separately metered, meets water-efficiency standards, and the tenant gets a copy of the bill. Other states have their own versions of this rule. So:
- If your organisation owns the house, the template figure is right - it is the whole bill.
- If your organisation rents the house, you are probably only paying usage. That is the “usage cost” column above: $140 a quarter for three people, $162 for four and $171 for five, or well under half the template figure. Lower the line accordingly.
Sources: Sydney Water residential pricing · Sydney Water efficiency targets · Bureau of Meteorology national performance report · NSW Government: water in rental properties
Internet
Section titled “Internet”$94 a month is the ACCC’s median advertised price for an NBN 100/20 Mbps plan. Over a year that is $1,128, or $278 per 90 days.
Why the 100 Mbps tier and not the cheaper 50. For years 50/20 was the plan most households bought. That changed in September 2025, when NBN Co upgraded its 100/20 product to 500/50 at no extra wholesale cost. The ACCC’s own quarterly figures show the switch: in June 2025 there were 3.49 million homes on 50 Mbps and 0.70 million above 100 Mbps; by March 2026 it was 2.67 million on 50 Mbps and 3.04 million above 100. The faster tier is now the bigger group, and it is what a shared house buys today.
The figure is identical for a 3, 4 and 5 bedroom house, and that is not an oversight. An NBN plan is a flat monthly fee, roughly 19 in 20 plans include unlimited data, and NBN Co has now removed the last usage-based charge from its wholesale pricing. A fifth person in the house genuinely does not make it cost more. This is the one utility that does not scale at all - which means the per-participant share simply falls as the house fills up.
Expect this to drift upward each July. NBN Co raises wholesale prices roughly in line with inflation on 1 July each year (3.63% for 2026-27) and retailers pass it on. The ACCC price above was sampled in June 2025, so if anything the template runs slightly low.
Sources: ACCC communications market report (advertised prices as at June 2025, GST inclusive) · ACCC NBN wholesale market indicators, March quarter 2026 · NBN Co wholesale price changes from 1 July
Who pays for all of this
Section titled “Who pays for all of this”Worth stating plainly, because it is the reason these lines exist at all. The NDIA’s own guide to providing SIL says SIL funding does not cover day-to-day living costs, and lists “utilities such as gas, electricity, water, telephone or internet bills” among the examples. These are costs the participants meet themselves out of their own income, which is exactly why a provider needs a defensible, itemised figure for each one rather than a single lump sum.
Source: NDIS guide to providing supported independent living
Deliberately left blank, and switched off.
About 5 million of Australia’s roughly 11 million households are connected to mains gas, and they are concentrated in Victoria, NSW and the ACT. Close to half of all houses have no gas connection at all. Any national default would therefore be wrong more often than right - and a wrong number that looks researched is worse than an empty box.
If the house has gas, switch the line on and enter your own bill. If it does not, leave it alone: an excluded line with no amount never reaches a calculation, so nothing is blocked.
Source: Future Gas Strategy - how Australian gas is used today
The lines that stay empty
Section titled “The lines that stay empty”Unplanned repairs, major replacements, gardening, consumables, fire safety checks, appliance safety testing, and the three food lines all arrive blank. There is no published benchmark for any of them, because they depend on your contracts, your provisions and your menu. These lines arrive switched off, so nothing blocks a calculation - but nothing is charged for them either until you price them and switch them on.
When these figures go stale
Section titled “When these figures go stale”Nearly everything here changes on 1 July. The electricity prices apply to the 2026-27 financial year and will be superseded when the AER and ESC publish their next determinations, normally in May. The water prices are Sydney Water’s 2026-27 list. NBN Co raises wholesale prices each 1 July and retailers follow. The consumption benchmarks behind the electricity figures were published in December 2020 and are the current ones under the National Energy Retail Rules, but they describe households as they used the grid before the recent shift to electric heating and vehicles.
Templates do not update themselves, and they never reach back into a set you have already created. If a figure here is out of date, the set you built from it keeps whatever number it was given - which is the same principle as a saved scenario keeping its original rates.