PIAC responded to the Australian Energy Regulator’s (AER) consultation on draft Distributed Energy Resources (DER) integration expenditure guidance (the Guidance) for Distribution Network Service Providers (DNSP).
PIAC broadly supported the draft guidance, considering it likely to facilitate transparency and comparability of DNSPs’ DER integration expenditure and encourage efficient network planning and investment. However, we had some concerns around the proposed approach to costs and benefits for the Value of DER (VaDER) calculation.
We consider the benefit category of changed DER investment will be hard to accurately measure and is not directly-enough linked to changes in network hosting capacity.