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Australia has a long history of privately owned utility price regulation, one that is little known. This price control was designed to restrain the market power of several utilities (gas, rail, tramways, electricity, and water). The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to establish what types of price control that were used in Australia in the utilities sector before the First World War and to determine the degree to which this price control influenced efficiency. As price levels in this era were set in legislation, the lack of flexibility led to less-than-optimal outcomes, and eventually and led to new approaches were developed after 1912 to the utilities that remained in private ownership, and in some cases influenced the movement in Australia towards government control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to comprehensively analyse the sustainability reporting practices of Australian electricity retailers in comparison with global sustainability reporting indicators outlined in the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework. Design/methodology/approach: Based on the GRI G4 sector-specific guidelines, the paper investigated Australian electricity retailers' reporting in three broad areas of sustainability, namely, economic, environmental and social. The 2018/2019 annual reports along with websites, corporate social responsibility reports and standalone sustainability reports of the major electricity retailers listed on the Australian Energy Regulator were analysed and coded using a content-based technique. Findings: The findings inform that electricity retailers' disclosures are substantially varied between and within the three categories of sustainability reporting, and the majority of the retailers have failed to address over two-third of the GRI indicators. This study also shows that positive information is the dominant form of the disclosures, and reporting with declarative information without providing any quantifiable data is a common practice of the retailers who fail to address an indicator that requires information in numerical terms. Originality/value: Electric utilities provide essential services to society and have a significant influence on sustainable development. This study contributes to the social disclosure literature, in particular in a developed countries energy sector context, and captures insights about the sustainability reporting and accountability behaviour of the major electricity retailers operating in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Restructuring of Australia's electricity supply industry during the 1990s led to two clear lines of business emerging, (i). regulated utilities (i.e. poles & wires), and (ii). merchant utilities (i.e. competitive generation and retail). There are dozens of utility businesses in Australia but only four were listed on the Australian Stock Exchange — two regulated and two merchant. Over the past decade the Australian Energy Regulator entered a 'tightening phase' vis-à-vis Opex and Capex allowances, with regulated utilities arguing regulated rates of return were sub-optimal. In this article, earnings, dividends and market valuations of Australia's ASX-listed regulated and merchant utilities are analysed over the period 2007–2021. The practical evidence is Australia's regulated utilities avoided the large swings in earnings that characterised merchant utilities, exhibiting outcomes consistent with the lifecycle theory of dividend policy (i.e. falling cost of capital). Soaring valuations culminated in the simultaneous takeover events of Australia's two ASX-listed regulated utilities. This makes criticisms of regulatory policy on rates of return hard to reconcile, at least from an historic perspective. However, the industry now faces a very different trajectory and set of market conditions — rising rates, higher inflation and an unwinding of lifecycle theory effects given substantial network investments required to meet climate change objectives. This may in turn require returns policy recalibration. Unfortunately for policymakers, all regulated utilities have now been delisted, ending our ability to observe 'real' capital market responses to regulatory change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on the carbon footprint of 22 scenario pathways for the transition of the Australian electricity sector to predominantly renewable energy (RE). The analysis employs a dynamic and discrete numerical model that takes into account what we have termed renewable energy ‘breeding’, i.e. RE technologies are being made increasingly with renewable electricity as the transition progresses. Our results show that every scenario under investigation fails to achieve the sector's share of Australia's national carbon budget for a 1.5 °C global warming limit and around one-third fail the 2 °C target by 2050. In most of the scenarios considered, the reduction in annual life-cycle CO 2 e emissions in the year 2050, from taking into account the effect of RE breeding, was substantial, in some cases reducing annual emissions by more than 90%. But, the reduction in cumulative CO 2 e emissions resulting from RE breeding only became significant post-2040. Unless a very rapid transition is made to more than 80% renewable electricity in Australia well before mid-century, any positive ‘breeding’ effect is simply dwarfed by fossil-fuel derived emissions prior to and during the actual transition. Therefore, early, decisive, wide-scale deployment of a suitable mix of RE technologies is needed to reduce cumulative emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzing the probability of power transformer failure is challenging because to observe a sufficient number of failures requires a fleet size larger than what is often operated by one utility. Parametric distributions have been applied to small datasets to model failure. However, an assumption is that the failure follows the chosen distribution. Reliability data from 97% of the 6057 utility-owned power transformers operating in mainland Australia and Tasmania were collected and analyzed to develop a more accurate understanding of failure statistics. Information on 564 failures and retirements occurring between 2000 and 2015 was collected, stratified into distribution, subtransmission, and transmission voltage class units, and then analyzed. The useful life of the three different populations was estimated, and the relationship between age and different failure types was investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Active load shifting of the electricity demand unlocks a variety of benefits. Examples of such advantages include the increased stability of energy systems, reduced electricity costs and financial savings in the transmission as well as generation infrastructure. Although the technology necessary for demand response has been extensively studied for individual appliances or at the micro-grid level, evaluations of its nationwide impact are scarce. Yet governments and policy-makers require quantitative assessments in order to understand the underlying value and derive appropriate policies. For this purpose, this paper utilizes real-world data from the German-Austrian electricity market in order to calculate ex post the impact of demand response on electricity spot prices and load. As a result, we find that a 25% adoption rate of the available potential for load shifting could have decreased nationwide electricity expenses by approximately €500 million, or 6%, in 2014. At the same time, we observe that the price volatility rises under this scheme and thus impairs non-flexible electricity customers. This observation entails significant implications in terms of designing effective policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian electricity industry has found itself the subject of an intense political debate. At the center is the role of coal-fired generation. The most economic form of new generation technology in Australia is wind on a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) basis. However, new wind generation must be ‘firmed’ to address variability in output. The analysis in this article finds the optimal plant mix will need to be increasingly ‘flexible’ to complement variable renewables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global experience with regulatory reforms that promote competition in small and isolated energy markets is limited. We contribute to this knowledge and policy gap by analysing the reform experience and policy options in Australia's Northern Territory ( NT) electricity market. More private participation in electricity generation and retail in the short-term and intra-regional market integration in the medium term may be appropriate policy options as the demand for electricity grows. Reforms in smaller electricity markets such as the NT should be geared towards meeting the environmental and de-carbonisation objectives from the early stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An hourly energy balance analysis is presented of the Australian National Electricity Market in a 100% renewable energy scenario, in which wind and photovoltaics (PV) provides about 90% of the annual electricity demand and existing hydroelectricity and biomass provides the balance. Heroic assumptions about future technology development are avoided by only including technology that is being deployed in large quantities (>10 Gigawatts per year), namely PV and wind. Additional energy storage and stronger interconnection between regions was found to be necessary for stability. Pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) constitutes 97% of worldwide electricity storage, and is adopted in this work. Many sites for closed loop PHES storage have been found in Australia. Distribution of PV and wind over 10–100 million hectares, utilising high voltage transmission, accesses different weather systems and reduces storage requirements (and overall cost). The additional cost of balancing renewable energy supply with demand on an hourly rather than annual basis is found to be modest: AU$25–30/MWh (US$19–23/MWh). Using 2016 prices prevailing in Australia, the levelised cost of renewable electricity (LCOE) with hourly balancing is estimated to be AU$93/MWh (US$70/MWh). LCOE is almost certain to decrease due to rapidly falling cost of wind and PV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite considerable mitigation efforts, global emissions from the electricity sector continued to grow in recent years. In Australia, the electricity sector is the largest CO 2 -emitting industry, contributing 35% of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions. The Australian government targets an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 relative to 2010. With a large variety and quantity of renewable energy resources, it is technically feasible and seems indispensable that Australia's electricity sector be largely decarbonised by 2050 in order to achieve this target. In this paper, scenario-based hybrid Life-Cycle Assessment is applied to calculate the economy-wide carbon footprints of seven electricity generation technologies in scenarios with differing renewable electricity penetration. This work is the first to apply a full life-cycle approach to scenario analysis of electricity generation in Australia. The findings are at the higher end of previously reported carbon footprint intensity ranges and above median values. However, even when taking into account indirect emissions along the technologies' life-cycles, the results indicate that the employment of different renewable energy technologies can potentially save a considerable fraction of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. This makes renewables an essential option for climate change mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing demand for air-conditioning is one of the largest contributors to Australia overall electricity consumption. This has started to create peak load supply problems for some electricity utilities particularly in Queensland. This research aimed to develop a consumer demand side response model to assist electricity consumers to mitigate peak demand on the electrical network. The proposed model allows consumers to independently and proactively manage air conditioning peak electricity demand. The main contribution of this research is how to show consumers can mitigate peak demands by optimizing energy costs for air conditioning in a several cases such as no spike and spike considering to the probability spike cases may only occur in the middle of the day for half hour spikes. This model also investigates how air conditioning applied a pre-cooling method when there is a substantial risk of a price spike. The results indicate the potential of the scheme to achieve energy savings and reducing electricity bills (costs) to the consumer. The model was tested with the Queensland electricity market data from Australian Energy Market Operator and Brisbane temperature data from Bureau statistic during hot days. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a multi-nodal intertemporal Cournot gaming model with transmission constraints and uses it to simulate energy-only and capacity-energy market designs in the presence of uncertainties stemming from intermittent renewable power generation. Both market paradigms are compared to a competitive benchmark in order to determine which one performs better in a concentrated market with significant penetration of wind and solar generation. As a specific example, the model is applied to the South Australian zone of the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM). The simulation results for the time interval 2013–2030 show that the capacity-energy market has the potential to induce significant new capacity and push prices much closer to the competitive level in contrast to the current energy-only market design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a rule-based power management algorithm to enable the dispatch of a utility-scale PV power plant consisting of a hybrid energy storage system, in accordance with the Australian national electricity rules. This algorithm is purposely designed to regulate the instantaneous power of a PV plant with the same level of dispatchability as conventional power plants. Additionally, the proposed algorithm is robust under large forecasting errors (up to 60%) of solar irradiance and it can be easily implemented in practice. Specifically, this algorithm can be executed within seconds even when considering detailed market operation and model nonlinearities. A 30 MW PV plant, including a 7.5 MW/1.25 MWh vanadium redox battery and a 1.5 MW/0.25 MWh suppercapacitors bank, has been modeled using MATLAB/Simulink and PLECS software environment. The simulation results were based on various scenarios and confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed power management algorithm. It has been shown that even in the worst-case scenario of solar forecasting error of 60%, the proposed algorithm still managed to deliver over 94% of the available energy for a given solar irradiance profile of one month. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Injustice is said to be the cornerstone of collective action, but why is it so important, and how does the way in which it is framed for mobilisation affect the outcomes? This paper compares two lengthy disputes in the Australian electricity industry which demonstrate that a sense of injustice and a history of successful industrial action do not guarantee that a dispute will be resolved to employees’ satisfaction when the wider context is unfavourable. Although leaders of both disputes expressed confidence in success predicated on the outcomes of previous industrial activity, there were specific factors within the industrial, economic and political context which provoked determined employer and government counter mobilisation leading to unsuccessful outcomes for the workers in dispute. The reasons for the poor outcomes are discussed within the context of the framing of the injustice by leaders and the effect of the response of a determined government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owing to the technological development of natural gas exploration and the increasing penetration of gas-fired power generation, gas and power systems inevitably interact with each other from both physical and economic points of view. In order to effectively assess the two systems' interdependency, this paper proposes a systematic modeling framework and constructs simulation platforms for coupled gas and power systems in an energy market environment. By applying the proposed approach to the Australian national electricity market (NEM) and gas market, the impacts of six types of market and system factors are quantitatively analyzed, including power transmission limits, gas pipeline contingencies, gas pipeline flow constraints, carbon emission constraints, power load variations, and non-electric gas load variations. The important interdependency and infrastructure weakness for the two systems are well studied and identified. Our work provides a quantitative basis for grid operators and policy makers to support and guide operation and investment decisions for electric power and natural gas industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing the energy and carbon efficiency of homes has been at the forefront of international climate change mitigation policy. In Australia, recent policy action led to the introduction of minimum energy efficiency standards for new homes within the Building Code of Australia in 2003, with subsequent stringency increases in 2006 and 2010. Although not yet reflecting international best regulatory practice, these standards represent substantial progress in addressing the energy and carbon emission impact of new homes, yet there are a number of energy policy challenges that highlight the need for further change. This paper documents the history of house energy standards in Australia and examines the post-occupancy evidence of that policy outcome. The paper examines international and domestic issues pointing to a possible future direction for Australian house energy regulation, highlighting the key drivers for change. In particular, we investigate the concepts of net zero carbon and net zero energy homes which have recently been adopted internationally, examining the technical and economic evidence that would support such a policy position in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

FCAS markets offer three features that may reduce costs and facilitate the integration of larger quantities of variable renewables, such as wind and solar photovoltaics. These have been successfully implemented in the Australian National Electricity Market and may serve as an effective model for other electricity systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an energy offering strategy for wind power producers. A new trading plan is presented through which a wind power producer can employ demand response (DR) to maximize its profit. To consider DR, a new DR scheme is developed here. The proposed plan includes two steps: The first step takes place on a day-ahead basis. The corresponding decisions involve an initial offering schedule and preliminary DR arrangements for the following day. The second step coincides with the day of the energy delivery. A consecutive approach is proposed in which the wind power producer determines its final energy offer during each trading interval. Simultaneously, the required DR agreements for that interval are also confirmed. This approach is repeated until all periods of the day are covered. The proposed plan is formulated as a stochastic programming approach, where its feasibility is evaluated on a case of the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]