What to do if your power is disconnected

Look outside before you look at your bills. If your neighbours' lights are out, the streetlights are off or the traffic signals at the corner are dark, this is a network outage and no amount of paying your account will fix it. Outages belong to your distributor, whose fault number is printed on your bill and staffed around the clock — Ausgrid in much of New South Wales, for instance, takes outage and emergency calls on 13 13 88, and Western Power runs a faults line on 13 13 51. Report it, check the outage map, and treat the rest of this guide as irrelevant for the moment.

If the street has power and your house does not, go to your switchboard next. A tripped main switch, a failed safety switch or a single blown circuit looks exactly like a disconnection from inside the house and is fixed in ten seconds or by an electrician in an hour. Reset the main switch once. If it trips again immediately, something on your side of the meter is faulty and you need an electrician rather than your retailer.

Then check the meter. A physical disconnection is often visibly tagged or sealed, but a remotely disconnected smart meter shows nothing from the outside, so the absence of a tag proves nothing. Now search your post, email and junk folder for a disconnection warning notice. The warning must tell you the reason, the deadline, what reconnection involves and costs, and how to reach the ombudsman. If you find one, the rest of this guide applies. If you find nothing, say so when you call — a disconnection carried out without the required notice is a serious compliance failure and, in Victoria, one that triggers a wrongful disconnection payment.

There are three other explanations worth ruling out before you accept that this is about money. The account may have been closed by a departing housemate or a previous tenant, leaving the address with no retailer at all. The property may sit inside an embedded network — an apartment block, retirement village or caravan park where a building operator on-sells energy — in which case the operator, not a mainstream retailer, controls supply. Or you may be on a prepayment meter, common in parts of Tasmania and the Northern Territory, where the supply simply stops when the credit runs out and no notice is given at all.

Finally, if anyone in the house depends on electrically powered life support equipment, treat this as an emergency rather than a billing problem and say those words on the first call. Registered life support premises are not supposed to be disconnected for non-payment at all, and a disconnection that has happened anyway needs to be escalated within minutes, not days. Write down the time you noticed and the name and reference number of every person you speak to, because almost every remedy later in this guide turns on a timeline that only you are keeping.

Disconnection for non-payment is the last step of a sequence, not a decision made on the day. In New South Wales the Energy and Water Ombudsman describes it plainly: before disconnecting, a provider must issue at least two written notices, with at least six business days between them. The second of those, the disconnection warning notice, must set out the reason, the deadline for payment, the reconnection procedure and its cost, and EWON's own contact details — which is the regulator quietly ensuring that the document threatening you also tells you how to stop it.

Western Australia sets the same idea out in business days. Under the Code of Conduct enforced by the Economic Regulation Authority, an electricity disconnection warning cannot be sent until at least 20 business days after the bill was issued, and must then give at least five business days' warning. For gas the equivalents are 22 business days and ten. Where the disconnection is for refusing access to the meter rather than for non-payment, five business days' written notice is required.

The timing restrictions are as important as the notice periods and are the ones customers least expect. EWON lists them for New South Wales: no disconnection on weekends, on public holidays or on the day before a public holiday; none outside the hours of 8am to 3pm; and none at all during the period from 20 to 31 December. Western Australia's distributors are similarly barred from disconnecting after 3pm Monday to Thursday, or on weekends and public holidays. The practical consequence is that a Thursday afternoon disconnection warning expiring on a Friday cannot lawfully be acted on until the following week.

Victoria approaches the same problem from the other direction. Rather than counting notices, the Essential Services Commission's payment difficulty framework — Part 6 of the Energy Retail Code of Practice, in force since January 2019 — defines a set of assistance a residential customer is entitled to, and makes disconnection lawful only as a measure of last resort once that assistance has genuinely been offered and has failed. The commission's own compliance work has repeatedly turned on whether retailers actually did the earlier steps rather than on whether they posted the right letters.

If a notice has arrived and you have not yet been cut off, you are in the strongest position you will ever be in on this issue. Ring the retailer the same day, use the phrase financial hardship, and ask for the hardship team by name. Almost every protection described in the next section is triggered by that call and by nothing else — the rules are generous to customers who make contact and unforgiving of customers who go quiet. Keep the notice either way: if the sequence was defective, that document is the evidence.

The strongest protection is life support. Where someone at the premises relies on equipment such as an oxygen concentrator, a kidney dialysis machine, a ventilator or a continuous positive airway pressure respirator, registration bars disconnection outright. The Australian Energy Market Commission's rule change on the point makes the timing generous: protections apply from the moment you first tell either your retailer or your distributor that life support is needed, not from the moment the paperwork is finished. A medical confirmation process follows, and failing to complete it will get you deregistered — so finish it.

The second is an active hardship arrangement or payment plan. A customer who is on a retailer's hardship program, or who has told the retailer they are in financial difficulty, is protected from disconnection for non-payment. EWON notes the limit on that protection: it can fall away where, in the previous twelve months, the provider has twice offered a payment plan or hardship assistance and the customer has not taken it up or has not kept to it. That is a strong argument for engaging with the first offer rather than the third.

The third is the minimum disconnection amount — a floor on the debt, below which a retailer cannot disconnect a customer who has agreed to repay. The Economic Regulation Authority puts the Western Australian figure at $300. Victoria has had the same figure and is lifting it to $1,000 from 1 October 2026, explicitly to reflect how far bills have risen. In the national framework the Australian Energy Regulator reviewed the amount in 2025 and moved to raise it from $300 to $500, a change advocates including the Justice and Equity Centre argued did not go far enough.

The fourth is an open complaint. In New South Wales, EWON lists an active complaint with the retailer or with EWON about the arrears as a bar to disconnection. South Australia's scheme goes further and states the consequence directly: when you lodge a complaint, the supplier cannot disconnect or restrict supply while it is being handled, must contact you within two days, and must arrange same-day reconnection if the energy has already been cut off. In Western Australia a complaint under investigation is likewise a bar.

The fifth is jurisdiction-specific and badly under-used. In New South Wales, a provider is not allowed to disconnect you if it knows you have an appointment booked for an assessment for Energy Accounts Payment Assistance — the state's voucher scheme — and has been given the appointment details. Booking the appointment and telling the retailer therefore buys real time, not merely goodwill.

The sixth is family violence. The national rules, amended by the AEMC and in force since 1 May 2023, require retailers to put an affected customer's safety first, to accept the disclosure without documentary evidence, to keep their information confidential, to use a safe communication method, and to weigh the impact of debt recovery before pursuing it. Western Australia goes further: once a retailer is told, it may not disconnect that supply address for nine months.

In Victoria, a retailer also cannot disconnect a residential customer on an active payment arrangement, and must take personal circumstances — job loss, illness, family violence, an unexpected shock — into account first. Victorian customers are entitled to standard assistance without proving anything: paying smaller amounts more often, changing how often they pay, delaying a bill once a year, or paying in advance. Once more than $55 is owed and a bill missed, tailored assistance opens up, including a repayment plan of up to two years and a payment hold of at least six months. Every one of these protections is opt-in.

Ring the retailer first, not the distributor. The distributor physically restores the supply but only on the retailer's instruction, so the retailer is the only party that can start the clock. Ask for the hardship or customer assistance team by name rather than accepting the collections queue, and open with the two sentences that matter: that you have been disconnected, and that you are in financial hardship and want reconnection plus a payment arrangement. Aurora Energy, for example, publishes 1300 139 301 for exactly this conversation, and says an agreement reached before the technician attends can cancel the disconnection outright.

Do not accept a demand that you clear the entire debt first. In July 2026 the Essential Services Commission publicly reminded Victorian retailers of this after reports that disconnected customers were being asked for large arrears up front, saying reconnection should help customers re-establish workable arrangements rather than create new barriers. It set out what a retailer must accept: regular, equal payments at intervals of up to one month, clearing the arrears within two years, covering ongoing use as well as the debt, based on a reasonable estimate of twelve months' consumption. Even outside Victoria, that is a defensible template.

Make a concrete offer rather than describing your situation. A figure and a date — sixty dollars a fortnight starting on the 14th — is a proposal that can be accepted on the call. An account of how hard things are is not, and leaves the retailer to decide. If you do not know what you can afford, a financial counsellor on the National Debt Helpline, 1800 007 007, will work it out with you free of charge and will negotiate with the retailer directly if you want them to.

Ask, in the same call, for four things beyond reconnection: the concession to be applied to the account if you hold an eligible card, an application for your state's emergency energy grant to be started, enrolment in the hardship program, and a waiver or deferral of the reconnection fee. Reconnection fees are real — Aurora Energy tells customers they are responsible for disconnection and reconnection charges plus any collection costs, and that a street-level disconnection costs more — and they are frequently reduced or held over when asked about in the same breath as a payment plan.

Get the timeframe in writing. Western Australia publishes hard maximums — two business days for a metropolitan electricity reconnection, six regionally, three for gas — with service standard payments where the supplier misses them. Elsewhere the standard is softer: EWON reports most NSW providers will attempt same-day reconnection where you pay something or agree a plan, while Aurora Energy states it does not guarantee same-day or after-hours restoration. Ask what an after-hours reconnection costs.

If the retailer will not move, stop negotiating and lodge an ombudsman complaint. Tell the retailer you are doing it, because in New South Wales and Western Australia an open complaint about the arrears is itself a bar to further disconnection action. If you live in an embedded network, the building's operator controls your supply, but EWON's position is that residential operators in New South Wales must be scheme members where supply is individually metered, so the ombudsman route survives. Meanwhile, photograph the fridge and freezer before discarding anything and keep receipts — those records support a compensation claim if the disconnection turns out to have been wrongful.

Every state and territory has a free external dispute resolution route for energy customers, and every one of them treats disconnection as a priority. They are funded by the industry, cost the consumer nothing, and have the power to require a supplier to restore supply, correct an account, waive charges or pay compensation. Using one does not affect your credit file and does not prevent you switching retailers afterwards.

New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania each have a dedicated energy and water ombudsman. The ACT is the outlier: complaints there are heard by the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal on a dedicated energy and water list, with no application fee. In the Northern Territory, where Jacana Energy is the sole residential electricity retailer, unresolved complaints go to the Ombudsman NT, with NT Consumer Affairs as a further avenue.

What lodging actually does is worth understanding precisely, because it is stronger than most people assume. The Energy and Water Ombudsman SA states that where energy has been disconnected, lodging a complaint obliges the supplier to arrange same-day reconnection, bars any disconnection or restriction while the complaint is being handled, and requires the supplier to contact you within two days. EWON treats an active complaint about the arrears as a circumstance in which a provider cannot disconnect. Western Australia's code likewise protects a customer whose complaint is under investigation.

Victoria adds a financial consequence on top. Under Victorian energy legislation a retailer that disconnects a customer in breach of its contract must pay a prescribed wrongful disconnection payment. The Energy and Water Ombudsman Victoria assesses whether the rules were followed and whether the payment is owed, and where the ombudsman and the retailer cannot agree, the matter is referred to the Essential Services Commission for a binding decision. Each case is decided on its own facts and is not treated as a precedent, so the amount varies.

Have four things ready when you call: your account number and the National Metering Identifier from your bill, the dates of every notice you received, a short chronology of who you spoke to and what they said, and the offer you made that was refused. A complaint that contains a specific rejected offer is materially easier to resolve than one that describes a hardship in general terms.

The regulators sit above the schemes and do a different job. The Australian Energy Regulator, the Essential Services Commission in Victoria and the Economic Regulation Authority in Western Australia enforce the rules and pursue systemic breaches, but they do not fix individual accounts, and ActewAGL's published 20-business-day window for answering an ACT complaint shows why waiting on the retailer is not a strategy when the power is already off. Report a pattern to the regulator by all means; get your power back on through the ombudsman.

Every state and territory funds some form of emergency assistance for households that cannot pay an energy bill, and every one of them is under-claimed. These are not loans and not hardship payments from the retailer — they are government money paid straight to your energy account, and in several jurisdictions the retailer starts the application. In New South Wales the scheme is Energy Accounts Payment Assistance, for people in short-term hardship, crisis or emergency who cannot pay a recent bill; a disconnection notice is one of the qualifying circumstances Service NSW names. Apply online through Service NSW or on 13 77 88, or through an approved non-government agency. The payment reaches your provider within about five business days.

Victoria runs the Utility Relief Grant Scheme, applied for through your retailer rather than directly — the Essential Services Commission requires retailers to help eligible customers complete and lodge the application, and to tell them it exists. It sits alongside the standard and tailored assistance entitlements, not instead of them.

Queensland's Home Energy Emergency Assistance Scheme pays up to $720 once every two years for households that cannot pay an electricity or reticulated natural gas bill because of an emergency or short-term financial crisis in the past twelve months. You must be responsible for the bill and either hold a concession card, have income at or below the part-age pension maximum, or already be on your provider's hardship program or payment plan. The process starts with your energy provider, who gives you an application number for the online form. Queensland's Concession Services line is 13 74 68.

South Australia pairs an ongoing energy bill concession, administered through Concessions SA, with the Emergency Electricity Payment Scheme for households in significant difficulty or already disconnected. The important structural detail is that the emergency scheme is reached only through a financial counsellor, who assesses your situation and lodges the application — which makes the National Debt Helpline on 1800 007 007 the first call in South Australia rather than the last.

Western Australia's Hardship Utility Grant Scheme is deliberately sequenced. You contact your provider, are assessed as being in financial hardship rather than temporary difficulty, complete a payment arrangement of at least 90 days, and if you still owe more than $300 the provider refers you to the HUGS service centre for independent assessment, with the Department of Communities making the decision. The grant is capped at $640 a year south of the 26th parallel and $1,060 north of it, and cannot exceed 85 per cent of the outstanding debt.

Tasmania's assistance runs largely through the retailer. Aurora Energy's Your Energy Support program offers payment plans of three to eighteen months, tailored energy advice, referrals to financial counsellors and protection from disconnection while you engage with it, and the state's concessions are applied to the account on request. The Australian Capital Territory pays an electricity, gas and water rebate to holders of eligible concession cards through the ACT Revenue Office. In the Northern Territory, members of the NT Concession Scheme claim an electricity concession on their principal residence through Jacana Energy, contactable on 1800 522 262.

Concessions are never applied retrospectively, so give your card details to the retailer the moment you become eligible, and check the concession line on the next bill after any move or change of card.

Life support registration is the most powerful protection in the energy rules and the one most often left undone until the week it is needed. It covers households relying on equipment such as an oxygen concentrator, a dialysis machine, a ventilator, a continuous positive airway pressure respirator, or anything else a registered medical practitioner certifies as required for life support. Registering is a phone call to either your retailer or your distributor, and the AEMC's rule change means the protections attach from the moment you make it rather than from the moment the file is complete. A medical confirmation process follows; complete it, because failing to return it is grounds for deregistration and deregistration removes the protection silently.

What registration buys is twofold. Your provider cannot arrange disconnection of the premises, and for planned interruptions to the network you are entitled to advance notice — four business days from receipt in New South Wales, which is the window in which you arrange a backup plan or somewhere else to be. It does not stop unplanned outages, because nothing does. That is why the schemes push registered customers to have a written life support action plan: a charged backup battery or generator where the equipment allows it, a phone that is not dependent on mains power, and a nominated place to go.

There is money attached. New South Wales runs a Life Support Rebate for households using approved energy-intensive equipment, and the Commonwealth pays an annual Essential Medical Equipment Payment towards running costs. Neither is automatic, and both sit separately from the general concession on your bill.

Family violence sits alongside life support as a registered status that changes how a retailer must behave. Since 1 May 2023 the national rules require retailers to put an affected customer's safety first in every dealing, to identify them through a secure process that avoids repeated disclosure, to accept the disclosure without documentary evidence, to train staff to respond appropriately, to publish a family violence policy, to keep the customer's information confidential, and to communicate only through a method the customer has said is safe.

Western Australia's version is more concrete and worth knowing even outside that state as a benchmark for what to ask for. Once a WA retailer is told, it may not disconnect that supply address for nine months; the customer can opt out of that protection if they prefer; the retailer must consider reducing or waiving fees, charges or debts; prepayment customers get additional financial assistance; and converting a prepayment meter to a standard meter is free. Written evidence cannot be demanded except in narrow circumstances.

The common thread is that none of these statuses is inferred from your circumstances. A retailer does not know that a household member is on dialysis, or that the debt was run up by someone who has since left. Each has to be told, once, on a call you should make before the next bill rather than after the next notice.

Reconnection is not the end of the sequence, because the debt that caused the disconnection is still there and the usage that created it has not changed. The Essential Services Commission's March 2026 Victorian data makes the point uncomfortably well: of the residential customers disconnected for non-payment that month, forty per cent had already accessed assistance at some earlier point. Getting back on supply without changing anything underneath tends to produce the same outcome a quarter later.

Start by fixing the plan rather than the behaviour. From 1 October 2026 Victorian retailers must move customers onto their cheapest available plan where the customer is on payment difficulty support, or has been in debt more than three months owing over $1,000; from 1 July 2026 they must check that customers on the same plan for four years or more are paying a reasonable price. Outside Victoria, ask the question yourself and check the market on Energy Made Easy, the Australian Energy Regulator's free comparison service.

Change the shape of the bill next. Paying weekly or fortnightly instead of quarterly converts an unmanageable lump into a manageable habit, and Victorian customers have a standing entitlement to it without producing documents. If you receive a Centrelink payment, Centrepay will deduct a fixed amount from each fortnightly payment straight to your energy account before the money reaches you, which removes the decision entirely. Energy ombudsman schemes and financial counsellors routinely recommend it for customers who keep falling behind between bills, and it can be varied or stopped at any time.

Get the concessions on the account and keep them there. A concession is applied from the billing period after you supply the card details, not retrospectively, so a card that changed status or a move to a new address can silently drop it. Check the concession line on the next bill after any change, and ask the retailer to confirm eligibility for every rebate in your state rather than only the general one.

Use free financial counselling before the next crisis rather than during it. The National Debt Helpline on 1800 007 007 is free, independent and not-for-profit, takes calls on weekdays from 9:30am to 4:30pm with live chat until 8pm, and its counsellors negotiate with energy retailers routinely. In South Australia a counsellor is the only way in to the Emergency Electricity Payment Scheme. They sell nothing, which distinguishes them sharply from commercial debt management firms.

Finally, keep the paperwork and know where the ombudsman is before you need it. Victorian retailers have had to print the Energy and Water Ombudsman Victoria's contact details on the front page of every bill since 1 February 2026, which is a sensible standard to hold your own retailer to wherever you live. Keep every notice, every bill and every reference number for at least a year — a dispute about whether the notice sequence was followed is decided on documents, and the retailer's copy is not the one that will be produced in your favour.