Switching Your Melbourne Home from Gas to Electricity

Going all-electric has stopped being an ideological decision and become an arithmetic one. Gas supply charges apply whether you use gas or not, reverse-cycle heating is cheaper to run than gas heating, and induction cooking has quietly won over most of the people who swore they’d never give up a flame.

But there’s an order to doing this, and getting the order wrong is expensive. Here’s how we’d approach it.

Do the electrical infrastructure first

This is the single most important thing in this article.

Every gas appliance you replace adds electrical load. Induction cooktop, heat pump hot water, reverse-cycle heating — each one wants a dedicated circuit and real current. Do them one at a time without a plan, and you end up upgrading the switchboard halfway through, having already paid an electrician three separate call-out fees.

Start with an assessment of what you’ve got: switchboard capacity and spare ways, whether there’s RCD protection, the condition and size of the consumer mains, and the state of the existing wiring.

In the period homes through Hawthorn, Kew, Camberwell and Balwyn, this frequently turns up a board that was adequate for a house with a gas stove, gas heating and gas hot water — and is nowhere near adequate for the same house running all three on electricity.

Get the switchboard upgrade done first, sized for where you’re heading rather than where you are. Sometimes the meter panel needs attention too, particularly if the consumer mains are undersized.

And if the plan includes an EV as well as full electrification, that’s the moment to work out whether three-phase power is worth establishing. Doing it once is much cheaper than doing it twice.

Then work through the appliances, biggest first

Heating and cooling

Usually the biggest gas user in the house, and the easiest win.

Reverse-cycle air conditioning is the most efficient electric heating there is — it moves heat rather than generating it, which is why it delivers several units of heat per unit of electricity consumed. That efficiency is what makes it cheaper to run than gas ducted heating despite electricity costing more per unit.

Split systems zone naturally, so you heat the room you’re in. If you’re replacing gas ducted, you can either go ducted reverse-cycle or put split systems in the rooms that matter — the second is usually cheaper to install and cheaper to run.

Each system needs its own circuit. Plan for that.

Hot water

The second biggest, and the one with the best rebate support.

A heat pump hot water system works on the same principle as reverse-cycle air conditioning and is dramatically more efficient than both gas and old resistive electric storage. The Victorian Energy Upgrades program discounts them substantially, and there are federal certificates on top.

Two practical points: heat pumps need outdoor space with airflow and they make a modest amount of noise, so siting matters — not directly outside a bedroom window. And they want a dedicated circuit, ideally on a timer or controlled load so they run during the day on solar or overnight on off-peak.

Cooking

The one people worry about and then never think about again.

Induction is faster than gas, more controllable, and much easier to clean. The genuine considerations are that you need compatible cookware — magnetic base, so cast iron and most stainless steel work, aluminium and copper don’t — and that it needs a substantial dedicated circuit, typically 32A. That’s not a small addition to a board that’s already full.

If you have a pacemaker, check with your cardiologist first. It’s rarely an issue with modern devices but it’s worth asking.

Everything else

Gas fireplaces, outdoor heaters, gas dryers. Lower priority, easy to swap when they fail.

Then disconnect the gas — but only once

Here’s the bit that catches people out: you keep paying the gas daily supply charge until the meter is abandoned, even if you use nothing.

That charge is a few hundred dollars a year to have a pipe attached to your house. So the last step is arranging formal abandonment of the gas connection with your distributor. There’s usually a fee, and it pays for itself within a year or two.

Don’t do this until the last gas appliance is gone. Reconnecting is considerably more expensive than disconnecting.

What it’s worth, honestly

The wins: no gas supply charge, cheaper heating, appliances that are cheaper to run, better indoor air quality — gas cooktops produce nitrogen dioxide, which is a genuine issue in poorly ventilated kitchens — and a house that pairs properly with solar and a battery.

The costs: it’s real capital. Appliances, electrical infrastructure, possibly a switchboard and mains upgrade. The rebates help substantially but they don’t cover everything.

Who it suits best: anyone already renovating, anyone with solar, anyone whose gas appliances are near end of life anyway, and anyone planning to stay put long enough to get the payback.

Who should wait: if all your gas appliances are new and working, replacing them early rarely stacks up. Do it as they fail, but do the switchboard planning now so each replacement is straightforward.

Do it with solar and storage in mind

Electrifying roughly doubles what a household draws from the grid. That’s exactly the scenario where solar and a home battery start to make real sense — you’re generating during the day and now you’ve got the load to use it.

If both are on the horizon, plan them together. Board capacity, inverter position, battery location and circuit layout all interact, and sorting it once is far cheaper than retrofitting around decisions you’ve already made.

Talk to us

We do this work across Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, and the part we’re best at is the sequencing — telling you what to do first so you’re not paying twice.

Registered Master Electrician (REC 25989). Over 200 five-star Google reviews. Lifetime workmanship warranty.

Send us a photo of your switchboard and a list of what’s currently on gas. We’ll map out the order.

Get in touch.