This article has been co-authored by Rob Passey, Anna Bruce, Iain MacGill, Mike Roberts, Kelvin Say, Baran Yildiz from the Collaboration on Energy and Environmental Markets, at the Faculty of Engineering, UNSW.
The AEMC’s ‘Pricing Review: electricity pricing for a consumer-driven future’, is timely and provides an opportunity to assess the effectiveness, efficiency and equity of current network electricity pricing and services in a rapidly changing world of rooftop PV, home batteries and electric vehicle deployment.
As defined in the National Electricity Objective, these arrangements should put electricity users first and foremost. Many of these electricity users face affordability challenges, many wish to improve energy self-sufficiency and reliability, and many want to help reduce the environmental impacts of their energy use.
Key to all of these aims is facilitating and encouraging household electrification, and the deployment of consumer energy resources (CER), which can help flatten distribution network load peaks (for example household batteries) and, together with controllable loads such as water heating and EV’s, increase network utilisation, which should reduce costs for all users.
