Can I take my grid connected house off grid in Victoria?

Yes. You can take a grid connected house off grid in Victoria. If you ask, Powercor and AusNet will permanently remove your meter and the line to your house, and Energy Safe Victoria says the service is usually free. The paperwork is the easy part. The harder parts are building a system that can run the whole house through a Central Victorian winter, and deciding whether you really want to give up the connection. Powercor says that if you want power back later, it is treated as a new connection that must meet the rules of the day.

What is the difference between disconnecting and abolishing?

A disconnection switches your supply off but leaves the meter and line in place. An abolishment takes the meter and the supply cable away for good. Energy Safe Victoria explains the difference on its disconnection and abolishment page, last reviewed 8 September 2026. After a disconnection the house is still physically connected to the network. An abolishment is carried out by the electricity company.

That leaves three real choices when you go off grid:

• Stay connected and run the house mostly from your own solar and battery, with the grid kept as a backup.
• Disconnect through your retailer. No power flows, but the line and meter stay. AusNet describes a disconnection as usually temporary, with the meter left where it is.
• Abolish the supply. The meter and service line are removed permanently.

Most people who talk about going off grid mean the third choice. It is also the one that needs the most thought.

How do I ask Powercor or AusNet to remove my supply?

You or your electrician lodge an abolishment request online with your distributor, the company that owns the poles and wires to your property. In Central Victoria that is usually Powercor or AusNet. Energy Safe Victoria's page links to a Victorian Government tool that tells you which distributor you have.

Powercor. Powercor's abolish an electricity supply page tells you to apply through its eConnect portal: choose Submit Connection Request, then Abolishments. If the property has an active account, the account holder contacts their retailer and either authorises the retailer to raise the works order or closes the account. A standard overhead abolishment can take up to four weeks from the date you tell Powercor the property is vacant. Powercor says it does not usually charge, but charges can apply if the job turns out more complex than expected or the crew cannot get in.

That page is written with demolitions and empty houses in mind. Powercor says it can only go ahead once the property is vacant, although you can nominate a future vacate date in the application. That does not fit a house that will stay lived in on its own stand alone system, so tell Powercor plainly what you are doing and ask how they want to handle it before you lodge. Removing service poles, underground cables or pillars on your land is a separate request through Powercor's mySupply portal, and that work can carry a cost.

AusNet. AusNet calls it a meter abolishment, meaning the permanent removal of the meter and/or the service lines. Applications go through its EnergyConnect portal. You or your electrician can submit one, and you need to create a customer account first.

Energy Safe Victoria also points owners to the VESI Application for Abolishment of Electrical Supply form on the Victorian electricity distributors' website. It notes that all retailer accounts must be settled before an abolishment can begin.

What paperwork is involved?

Less than most people expect. You close out the retailer account, lodge the abolishment with your distributor, and have the new system installed and certified by a licensed electrician. The order matters, because the house should never be left without power:

• Design, install and commission the off grid system while the grid is still connected.
• Your electrician rearranges the switchboard so the house runs from the off grid inverter.
• Pay the final bill, then close the retailer account or authorise the retailer's works order.
• Lodge the abolishment and make sure the crew has clear access to the meter and service line.
• Once the crew has been, check with your own eyes that the metering is gone, as Energy Safe Victoria suggests.

Gas is a separate supply with its own process. If you are leaving gas at the same time, our article on getting off gas heating in Central Victoria covers it. If you are counting on a battery rebate, check that your off grid system is eligible before you sign anything, and read our article on whether home batteries will cost more in 2027.

How big does an off grid system need to be for a whole house?

Big enough for your worst week in winter, not your average day. A grid connected house never has to think about a cloudy week in July. An off grid house has to plan for one.

Start with what the house actually uses. Twelve months of interval data from your smart meter shows the winter days that matter, and your retailer can give it to you. Then add the loads that move onto your own system or grow once the grid is gone: heat pump hot water, electric heating, induction cooking, a bore or pressure pump, an EV. Our off grid hub walks through each of these.

The solar array is sized for June and July, when panels here make a fraction of their summer output. Our article on what the panels really make in a Central Victorian winter shows how far it drops. The battery is sized to carry the house through a run of dull days, and an auto start generator covers the rest. We build these systems on Victron Energy MultiPlus-II or Quattro inverter chargers with SmartSolar charge controllers, lithium batteries and GX monitoring, and we watch them remotely through the VRM portal from Trentham. For the battery side, see how much battery an off grid house needs.

The trade offs, honestly:

• A whole house off grid system costs a good deal more up front than a battery added to a grid connected house.
• The generator needs fuel and servicing, and someone has to keep an eye on both.
• Existing rooftop solar can sometimes be kept and coupled into the new system, and sometimes it cannot. It depends on the inverter model, so check before you plan around it.

Our free off grid sizing tool needs no login and gives you a starting size in a few minutes.

Should I keep the connection or leave it?

For most houses that already have a working connection, keeping it is the safer choice. Abolishing makes the most sense where the line itself is the problem. The reason is in Powercor's own guidance: if you need electricity again after an abolishment, it is treated as a new connection that must meet the current Victorian Service and Installation Rules, and your old arrangement may no longer comply. On a rural block that can mean real money. Our page on Powercor connection costs explains what drives the price.

Reasons to keep it:

• The grid is a backup that needs no fuel, no servicing and no trip to the shed in the rain.
• Some future buyers will want a grid connected house.
• You can run the house almost entirely from your own system and still have the grid behind it.

Reasons to let it go:

• You pay a daily supply charge every day, whether you use any power or not.
• A long SWER line in bushfire country brings outages and its own risk. We cover this in going off grid on a SWER line.
• You want the house to stand completely on its own.

There is a middle path. Build the system as a full off grid system, but leave the grid connected to the inverter charger's input as a spare. Live with it through a winter, then decide using real data. We set out the full comparison on off grid vs a grid connection. It is also worth reading about Powercor's stand alone power pilot, where the network itself supplies some properties without poles and wires.

What can I safely check myself, and what needs an electrician?

You can safely read the meter, look over your bills, watch the battery's state of charge and the generator's run hours on your monitoring app, and keep a clear path to the meter for the crew. Everything else is work for a licensed electrician or the distributor.

That includes anything inside the switchboard, the inverter, the battery terminals, and the generator's wiring and changeover. Energy Safe Victoria states that it is illegal to alter, remove or tamper with a supply cable or meter, and that a damaged or dislodged supply cable can cause serious injury, electric shock or death. Never cut, unhook or remove the service line yourself, even after the account is closed. Keep generator fuel in an approved container, away from the house and well away from the battery enclosure.

Where to start

Run your numbers through the off grid sizing tool. If you would rather we did the work, send us a recent bill and your address and we will come back with a right sized design. You can reach us through our contact page.