PIAC welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal’s (IPART) draft reliability standard. This review of the NSW Electricity Distribution Reliability Standard is an opportunity to reset the obligations and expectations of network reliability following unnecessarily high requirements in the past.
The review also presents an opportunity to better reflect new technologies such as solar and batteries, which are changing the way essential electricity services can be both delivered and used.
PIAC supports removing unnecessary overlap or duplication between jurisdictional reliability obligations and national ones. We also support NSW reliability standards acting as a backstop to the STPIS obligations by triggering networks to investigate what is a cost-efficient solution to meeting consumers’ value of reliability rather than triggering new investment.
We comment on Stand-Alone Power Systems, Sydney CBD reliability levels, and Guaranteed Service Levels (GSL), including supporting IPART’s recommendation to replace customer service standards with GSL and payments.
