Power use in New South Wales

There are nearly 7.6 million households across Australia, with 2.7 million in NSW and more than 1.5 million in the Sydney metropolitan area alone.

The numbers on what it takes to provide power to the average NSW home are pretty sobering.

Power plants in NSW burn coal to produce the electricity supplied to homes and businesses.

Here are a few facts about electricity generated by coal:

• 65-70 per cent of the energy released when coal is burned is lost as waste heat during the process of generating, transmitting and distributing that energy to your home
• an average NSW home uses 7,300 kWh of electricity a year – that's 160,000 black balloons of carbon pollution
• it takes nearly half a kilogram of coal to deliver 1 KWh (kilowatt hour) of power to a home in NSW
• in a year, this equates to around 3.7 tonnes of black coal for an average NSW household each year, and
• across NSW, this means over 10 million tonnes of coal are burned every year just to provide the electricity needs of NSW households.

• Every kilowatt hour (kWh) of NSW electricity that is used creates 1.07 kg of carbon pollution (also known as CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas). This compares to only 0.244 kg for natural gas and 0.231 kg of carbon pollution for LPG gas.^*
• The density of carbon pollution is about 1.98 kg per cubic metre.
• One black balloon – the measure being used in our Save Power campaign – equals 50g of carbon pollution.
• The average NSW home produces 160,000 black balloons every year - that equals billions of black balloons across the state.

So saving on power usage in just one home can make a big difference. Imagine the difference if we all took steps to save power!