Victorian residential gas connections and use, by electorate and postcode

×

About this map

Connections

The Connections view shows residential gas connections added and removed in each Victorian postcode, January 2023 to , from the data Victoria's three gas distributors must now publish under a Ministerial Order. Choose a layer and a period:

• New connections: meters (MIRNs) commissioned in the period.
• Disconnections: meters taken off the network. Tick which kinds to count: disconnections are temporary (gas locked off, plugged or the meter removed, but the service line left in place); abolishments are permanent (service cut and capped in the street, or meter and service line removed). Both are ticked by default.
• Unused: the rise in long-dormant meters (no gas used for 12 months or more) between the month-end before the period and its last month-end. These meters are still connected but not used: vacant or rebuilt homes, long absences, or households that have gone all-electric without disconnecting. Yellow means more unused meters; blue means fewer (meters used again, or removed).
• Net new connections: new connections minus the ticked exits. Blue postcodes added more gas connections than they lost; yellow and gold postcodes lost more than they added. Tick Count unused meters to show instead the change in connections in use (active minus long dormant) between the month-end before the period and its last month-end. That comes straight from the month-end counts, so it doesn't equal new minus exits minus the rise in unused (AusNet's stocks-and-flows caveat).
• The networks' counts start at January 2023 month-end, so for 2023 and the whole period, changes in unused and in-use connections run from end-January 2023.

Per 1,000 connections divides by the average number of active residential connections at each month-end in the period, so postcodes of different sizes can be compared. Postcodes averaging fewer than active connections are greyed out in this view.

Only the residential customer class is shown. Postcodes served by more than one network are summed across networks; the postcode panel splits them out.

Gas use

The Gas use view shows residential gas used in each postcode in each calendar year, to , from the networks' monthly read (billing) data.

• Total use: residential gas use in the year, in terajoules (1 TJ = 1,000 GJ).
• Per connection: residential gas use ÷ the average number of active residential gas connections at each month-end in the year (meters connected, whether used or not). Connection counts start in January 2023, so this measure covers 2023 onwards; earlier years show no data. Postcodes and electorates averaging fewer than active connections are greyed out. Across Victoria, residential use in works out at GJ per active connection.
• Change between years: the % change in total use (2020 onwards) or use per connection (2023 onwards) between two full years you choose. Postcodes using less than GJ in the first year are greyed out.

Use isn't weather-adjusted. A cold winter raises use and a mild one lowers it, so year-to-year changes mix weather with electrification, efficiency and price responses (prices rose sharply in 2022–23). Comparing years several apart is more reliable than comparing neighbouring years. Read data can also put some consumption in the month (or year) after it was used.

Electorates

The default view shows Victoria's 88 state electoral districts (Legislative Assembly; the 2021 boundaries in use for the November 2026 election) as clusters of five equal hexagons, each roughly the shape of its district, on a grid that follows Victoria's outline. Every district gets the same area, so Melbourne is enlarged and regional Victoria squeezed: Melbourne's 55 districts spread over the middle-south and regional districts move out towards the edges on their own side of the state. White lines mark the borders between districts. The heavy outline marks metro Melbourne: the 55 districts in the five Legislative Council metropolitan regions (so fringe seats such as Melton, Pakenham and Hastings, which sit in country regions, fall just outside it). The tooltip and panel list each district's gas networks. Switch to Postcode map for the geographic view, with the same metro Melbourne boundary drawn on the real district boundaries.

The networks publish by postcode, not electorate, so each postcode's figures are split between the districts it overlaps in proportion to its 2021 Census dwellings in each (built from ABS mesh blocks). This assumes connections and gas use are spread evenly over a postcode's dwellings, so a new estate in one corner of a postcode is shared with the rest of it. None of the three networks report residential customers in the Mildura district, so it shows as no data.

Gas networks

The tooltip and panel name the networks reporting residential customers in each postcode or electorate: AusNet Gas Services (mostly west and north of Melbourne and western Victoria), Multinet Gas (inner and outer east and south-east Melbourne) and Australian Gas Networks (AGN: inner, north and south-east Melbourne and much of regional Victoria). A postcode can be served by more than one network; the panel splits its figures by network.

Caveats

• Net flows don't reconcile with the change in active connections. AusNet notes that opening stock plus connections minus abolishments doesn't equal closing stock, because of how disconnections are recorded, and a disconnected meter can later be reconnected. The postcode panel shows the change in active connections alongside the flows.
• Not all exits are electrification. Demolitions and knock-down rebuilds, vacant homes and meter changes are counted too. New connections include new estates and rebuilds.
• Small postcodes are grouped. AusNet folds postcodes where it had fewer than 5 customers in a class at some point into "Other postcodes". These can't be mapped (residential, whole period: ) but are in the Victorian totals. Postcodes affected: .
• 2026 covers January to June only, so it looks lighter than full years on the same colour scale. In the Connections view the full years and 2026 share one colour scale and the whole period has its own; in the Gas use view every year shares one scale. For gas use, January to June is only about 30% of a year's reads (2020–2025: 29–36%), because most winter use is read from July onwards.
• The data is unaudited, and AusNet says it isn't directly comparable with its regulatory (RIN) customer numbers.
• Each customer's class is their latest tariff, applied back across the whole history.

Sources

See Sources and attribution. Built by Rewiring Australia.

×

Sources and attribution

This map is produced by Rewiring Australia. We have combined and summarised the data below, and the publishers don't endorse this map.

Acknowledgement

We thank the Victorian Environment Friends Network (VEFN) for assembling the data behind this map: collecting the files AusNet, Multinet and AGN published under the Ministerial Order and consolidating them into one consistent dataset.

Data

1. AusNet Gas Services, Customer usage and connection data (published ), conditions 4.2.b and 4.3. Residential connections and gas use by postcode and month, AusNet network.
2. Multinet Gas Networks, Ministerial Order data publication (published ), tables 2b and 3. Residential connections and gas use by postcode and month, Multinet network.
3. Australian Gas Networks, Ministerial Order data publication (published ), tables 2b and 3. Residential connections and gas use by postcode and month, AGN Victorian network.
4. All three are published under the Gas Distribution Network Data Ministerial Licence Condition 2026 (Victoria Government Gazette S 407, 15 July 2026). Assembled and consolidated by the Victorian Environment Friends Network (VEFN) on : VEFN's consolidated spreadsheet.
5. Australian Bureau of Statistics, ASGS Edition 3: Postal Areas 2021, Suburbs and Localities and mesh block allocation files, and Mesh Block Counts 2021. CC BY 4.0. Postcode boundaries and suburb names.
6. Australian Bureau of Statistics, ASGS Edition 3 non-ABS structures: State Electoral Divisions 2025 (mesh block allocation file and boundaries; Victorian Electoral Commission 2021 boundaries). CC BY 4.0. Splitting postcodes between electorates, and the hex layout.

Map and software

• Basemap: Esri World Light Gray Canvas. © Esri, HERE, Garmin, © OpenStreetMap contributors.
• Built with Leaflet (BSD 2-Clause) and TopoJSON (ISC). Boundaries simplified with mapshaper.

Map and summaries © Rewiring Australia. Built . Suggested citation: Rewiring Australia, Victorian gas connections map, accessed [date].