The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today issued draft guidelines for service standards for the regulated electricity transmission networks operating in Australia's electricity market.
"The proposed guidelines will help to improve the reliability of electricity supply to customers by providing incentives for network owners to improve service standards", Mr Ed Willett, ACCC Commissioner responsible for energy matters, said today.
"The ACCC proposes to introduce a performance-based incentive scheme for transmission networks, where service providers will be rewarded for improving service standards and penalised for deteriorating service levels.
"The service provider's performance will be assessed against a number of measures including the number and average duration of outages. If service providers outperform historic benchmarks they are eligible for additional revenues and vice versa".
In developing the draft guidelines, the ACCC sought advice from independent experts and consulted extensively. The ACCC now invites comments from interested parties.
The draft guidelines, decision document and consultancy report are available on the ACCC website.