How to Reduce Your Home’s Energy Costs in WA

Power bills in Western Australia keep climbing, but most homes are still losing money in the same predictable places: gaps around doors, missing insulation, old hot water systems running on gas, and appliances that are due for replacement. The good news is you don’t need a full renovation to fix most of it. Here’s where the money actually goes, and what to do about it, in order of what pays off fastest.

Start With What’s Free

Before spending a dollar, these habits alone can meaningfully cut your bill:

• Heating: It is recommended to set your heating to the lowest degree that is still comfortable, usually around 18–20°C. Every degree higher adds roughly 5-10% to your running cost.
• Cooling: It is recommended to set your cooling to the highest degree that is still comfortable, usually around 25–27°C. Regardless of the type of air conditioning you have, for each 1°C the temperature is lowered, energy use increases by 5 to 10%. So, it’s important not to over-cool.
• Curtains and doors: Open curtains for winter sun during the day, close them before dark. In summer, close curtains and use external shading on hot days, then open windows at night to let cool air in. Close internal doors so you’re only heating or cooling the rooms you’re using.
• Fans before aircon: Use ceiling or standing fans to feel cooler before switching on the air conditioner, or run them alongside so you can set the thermostat more efficiently.

None of this costs anything, and for many WA homes it’s the difference between a manageable bill and a painful one.

The Single Biggest Upgrade: Insulation

If you do nothing else, this is the one that moves the needle most. A well-insulated home uses less energy on heating and cooling each year compared with a home that has none. Ceiling insulation should come first, followed by floors and walls.

The catch: installation quality matters as much as the material. Just 5% of ceiling insulation missing or poorly fitted can cut its overall effectiveness by up to 40%, so an existing home with insulation that “looks fine” from below may still be underperforming badly. This is worth having checked by a professional rather than assumed.

Draught Sealing: Cheap, Fast, Underrated

Draughts around external doors and windows, skirting boards, architraves and other gaps quietly undo a lot of your heating and cooling effort. Sealing these is low-cost and low-effort, and it’s one of the first things worth doing in any WA climate zone. Pair it with modern self-sealing exhaust fans in bathrooms and kitchens, vented properly to outside air rather than into the roof cavity, which is a common and easily fixed source of heat loss.

Where Your Energy Actually Goes: Appliances

Once the building itself is sealed and insulated, the next biggest gains come from fixed appliances. Across most WA homes, the pattern looks similar:

• Hot water and heating are commonly among the largest loads, but the exact split depends heavily on your home’s systems.
• Plug-in appliances and standby loads can be a surprisingly large share of the bill.
• Pool pumps that are running on an older, inefficient single-speed pump contribute to higher energy bills.
• Lighting is usually the smallest slice, but also the cheapest and easiest to fix.

Practical, ranked actions:

• Hot water: plan the end-of-life replacement of a gas or electric resistive system with a solar-electric or heat pump system.
• Heating and cooling: an efficient reverse-cycle air conditioner, combined with ceiling fans, is the most cost-effective way to both heat and cool a home.
• Pool pumps: replace single-speed pumps with a higher star-rated model at end of life, this is a bigger saving than most homeowners expect.
• Lighting: switch to LEDs throughout, and if you have downlights, make sure they’re IC-4 rated so ceiling insulation can sit over them without a safety gap.
• Cooking: an induction cooktop uses energy more efficiently than gas, and improves indoor air quality.
  Showerheads: low-flow fixtures cut both water and the energy used to heat it, and it’s worth having any dripping taps fixed at the same time.

Windows and Shading

Windows are one of the highest-cost upgrades on the list, but also one of the highest-impact for comfort. If you’re renovating, prioritise glazing with a low U-value and a Solar Heat Gain Coefficient suited to the window’s orientation, look for products rated under the Window Energy Rating Scheme (WERS). Short of replacing glass, tight-fitting insulated coverings (heavy curtains with pelmets, honeycomb or cellular blinds) and external adjustable shading on unshaded north, east and west-facing windows both make a real difference for comparatively little cost.

Solar and Battery: Sized to Your Home, Not a Guess

Rooftop solar is consistently rated a high-cost, high-saving upgrade across every WA climate zone, and it’s usually low-effort to install. Battery storage adds a further, more moderate saving on top, but whether it’s worth it depends entirely on your usage pattern, how much of your solar generation you’re already using versus exporting. This is exactly the kind of decision that benefits from real data rather than a rule of thumb.

How to Know Which of These Actually Matters for Your Home

Every recommendation above is generic. Your home isn’t. Two houses on the same street can have completely different priorities depending on construction, orientation, existing insulation and appliance age.

This is what a Home Energy Rating for Existing Homes is for. An accredited assessor visits your home, measures its actual construction and appliances against WA’s climate zones, and produces a certificate ranking upgrades specifically for your house by cost, expected savings and effort, so you’re not guessing which of the above to do first. It also gives you a Star Rating (0–10) and a Home Energy Rating (0–100+), a genuine before-and-after benchmark if you’re planning to act on any of this over time.

Get Started in WA

EcoForm Consulting has accredited assessors covering Perth metro, Mandurah and the Peel region, and the South West, Mid West and Great Southern. If your council is a Switch Your Thinking partner, you can also get 10% off the RRP of a Home Energy Rating for an Existing Home, quote the code SWITCHYOURTHINKING when you book. Check if you’re eligible at the Switch Your Thinking Website.