This week the AEMC held a public workshop in Melbourne on ways to enable more wholesale demand response in the national electricity market. Slides from the workshop are now available on the AEMC’s website.
The workshop had over 100 attendees, comprising a wide cross-section of stakeholders including consumer representatives, retailers, generators, technology providers, demand response aggregators, market bodies and governments. Discussion focussed on three rule change requests which propose different approaches to facilitating wholesale demand response in the national electricity market from PIAC, Total Environment Centre, Australia Institute; the Australian Energy Council; and the South Australian Government.
The Commission provided an overview of how we are considering the rule change requests, and the different ways demand response could be facilitated. Innovations in technology are making it easier for industrial customers and households to provide demand response by turning off or reducing power use at very high demand times. This can help keep costs down by avoiding unnecessary investment in peaking generation that is only used for a few days a year.
The morning session of the workshop featured presentations from three different stakeholders on their experiences facilitating demand response; Enel X, Amber Electric and AGL. These presentations and the following Q&A session revealed commonalities in stakeholder experiences with wholesale demand response. It also highlighted the different approaches to facilitating demand response reflecting their different business models and customer types.
In the afternoon session, representatives from the South Australian Government, EnergyAustralia, AEMO and the Public Interest Advocacy Centre presented their different proposals for how to maximise opportunities for wholesale demand response.
Throughout the day stakeholders shared their views in a breakout session and with a stakeholder panel in the Q&A session. Stakeholder input from the workshop, along with submissions to our December 2018 consultation paper and informal feedback from stakeholders in discussions and meetings, will help guide the Commission’s draft determination due in July 2019.
In addition, we will convene our first technical working group meeting later this month. The group comprises experts from the Australian Energy Council, AGL, Australian Renewable Energy Agency, Total Environment Centre, Oakley Greenwood, Australian Energy Regulator, Enel X, Tesla, Energy Efficiency Council, ERM Power, Energy Queensland, BlueScope Steel, Public Interest Advocacy Centre, The Australia Institute, Flow Power, EnergyAustralia and AEMO. The group will provide technical input into the development and assessment of the rule change requests. Materials from the technical working group will be made available after the meeting.
These rule change requests are being progressed as part of the Commission’s broader system security and reliability work program.
Media: Bronwyn Rosser, Communication Specialist, 02 8296 7847; 0423 280 341