The recent RenewEconomy piece from Rob Passey and colleagues at CEEM is an important contribution to the debate on network pricing and consumer energy resources (CER), and deserves to be taken digested by policymakers and regulators.
Their work lays out, with welcome clarity, how high fixed network charges cut directly across the capabilities of home batteries, dynamic pricing and CER more broadly.
It is exactly the kind of grounded, system-aware analysis we need more of.
The AEMC’s pricing review starts from a real concern: under revenue-cap regulation, successful CER reduces grid consumption and so squeezes network revenues. But the proposed solution – loading more costs into fixed charges – treats CER as a problem to be contained rather than an asset to be orchestrated.
It shores up incumbents, locks in legacy cost structures, and produces pricing that protects the network’s revenue position instead of forcing it to compete on the value it provides.
