News & Views

What’s happening?

Essential Energy would like to advise, the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has recently released a Ring Fencing Guideline that Essential Energy must comply with by 1 January 2018.

The aim of the Guideline is to reduce the risk of anti-competitive behaviour by imposing obligations on electricity distributors from 1 January 2018 to functionally and/or legally separate areas of the business that deliver contestable services from areas that deliver regulated electricity services.

Essential Energy has decided to not set-up a separate business to deliver contestable works and therefore will withdraw from offering these services. However, we are concerned that this decision may reduce customers access to these services, especially in remote areas of our network where there is no alternate supplier.

As a result, we have submitted a waiver to the AER to allow us to continue to deliver contestable services under the ASP Scheme but only as a provider of last resort (i.e. where no ASP is available to complete the job). We have also proposed some conditions on how this would operate.

Should our waiver be rejected we would not be able to supply any of these services. This would impact electrical contractors who currently request Essential Energy to do some works where their licence does not allow them to do all works within a specific job. Instead electrical contractors would be forced to find an ASP to do these works.

Should our waiver be accepted under our current proposed conditions electrical contractors would be required to attempt to find an ASP to complete the required works and only be able to request these services from Essential Energy if no ASP was available. We have also proposed to the AER some conditions that could be used to ensure that any offers received from ASPs are reasonably priced, which is especially a concern in those locations where there is only one available ASP.

The AER has recently delivered its draft decision and approved our waivers. However, they have noted that they are interested in feedback on this decision from all stakeholders and Essential Energy wants to make sure you have an opportunity to comment should you wish to do so.

What do I need to do?

This is your opportunity to have your say, if you think this change will impact on your business– review our letter and waiver (Provider of Last Resort) which is located in the document library, if you would like to make a submission to the AER, submit them via email to the AER at ringfencing@aer.gov.au by 13 November 2017.

Further Information

For further enquiries please email aspinfo@essentialenergy.com.au

Click here to download AER Ring Fencing Guideline - Oppportunity for ASPs to comment + Annuexues