Transparency of new projects draft determination

PIAC responded to the Australian Energy Market Commission’s (AEMC’s) draft determination on transparency of new projects.

Overall, PIAC supports the AEMC’s draft determination. We consider it helps to improve the quality and not just the quantity of information available to connecting parties, AEMO, network businesses and other market participants while balancing the burden on affected parties. In particular, PIAC supports the following aspects of the draft decision:

• expanding the current eligibility for Intending Participants to allow developers to register under this category and gain access to relevant technical information for necessary studies and modelling.
• formally recognising AEMO’s Generator Information Page in the Rules to help provide greater certainty and stability of information both to the market and AEMO.
• key connection information being provided on each new connection project. Further, we support the obligation to publish this information applying from the connection enquiry stage.

We note the provision of information alone is unlikely to drive greater coordination of connections between generators and recommend broader reforms are needed to align the incentives for individual connecting generators with the system-wide optimal outcomes.