Planning in the Australian National Electricity Market — Challenges and opportunities

Effective planning is critical to electricity industries due to its role in investment decision-making regarding generation, network and demand-side resources in complex and changing circumstances. This paper expresses the institutional arrangements in Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM) in terms of a planning model. Planning was until relatively recently performed centrally. This paper shows what the current arrangements are: in many ways dispersed as part of electricity industry restructuring. It identifies efforts that have been required over time to address some of the resulting challenges. Existing frameworks from the literature are adapted and used to assess planning in the NEM with a focus on the contribution of the Federal Government's Energy White Paper. Our work proposes a number of opportunities to improve the Energy White Paper process to support better planning.