MY ACCOUNT
STORAGE LEVELS
WATER DATA
ANNOUNCED ALLOCATIONS
Published on YouTube 21 November 2025 (Duration: 2:00)
[music plays]
[cartoon drawing of dam spilling into river downstream, with birds and trees on the banks]
Narrator: Every year, Sunwater incurs costs to operate, maintain and renew our assets. This makes sure our dams and other infrastructure can continue to safely and reliably deliver water to our customers.
Operations and maintenance costs are much the same from year to year. But costs for renewals are only incurred when Sunwater needs to restore an asset or improve its function or reliability.
[cartoon drawing of woman in high vis vest, holding a clipboard]
If Sunwater were to pass these on directly, customer bills would go up and down dramatically from year to year. There are two ways we can smooth prices so you can be confident there won’t be significant changes in your water bills from one year to the next…
[text displayed: annuity or rab]
… the annuity method, which is what we currently use, or the regulated asset base, or RAB, method.
[cartoon drawing of house in a storm, with dark clouds and lightning]
Think of the annuity method like insurance. You pay your premium every year and, if something happens, the insurer covers the cost. So with the annuity method, we work out what might need to be done for up to 30 years in the future and use that to determine what customers need to pay each year to cover that work.
We can be pretty sure about the costs for the first four years, but after that, things get less certain. So customers might end up paying for work that doesn’t happen for 30 years – or at all.
[cartoon drawing of house and shed with fruit trees]
The RAB method, on the other hand, works more like a home loan. Customers pay back the cost of work that needs to be done through ‘principal’ and ‘interest’ payments over a set period of time. But importantly, customers only pay for work that has already been done.
[cartoon drawing of farmer with fruit trees]
Moving to RAB-based pricing means we need to convert closing annuity balances into opening RAB balances. We’ve developed a tool to help you understand what RAB-based prices might look like, so that you can respond to a brief survey we’ll be sending out.
[Sunwater logo appears]
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