The Australian Energy Market Commission has published a final rule to address errors related to the mechanics for charging for national transmission planner costs.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) is the system planner and outlines what transmission investment is needed in the national electricity market and when in its Integrated System Plan (ISP).

The final rule is aimed at facilitating the original policy intent of recent changes to the National Electricity Rules (NER) to implement the actionable ISP framework, which commenced on 1 July 2020.

The rule does this by addressing errors with the administrative and transitional mechanisms in the NER.

The final rule will provide the correct transitional and administrative mechanisms within the NER so that:

• AEMO is able to recover its national transmission planner (NTP) function fees for the 2020-21 financial year from co-ordinating network service providers (CNSPs), and CNSPs can include these fees in their transmission pricing
• there is alignment between AEMO’s budgeting process and CNSP’s transmission pricing processes, and
• there is clarity with regard to the recovery of NTP function fees in Victoria, where AEMO is the CNSP.

The rule change was submitted by the AEMO on 21 August 2020 and requested that the rule change proceed under an expedited process.

The rule change request was submitted with the support of Energy Networks Australia to address a number of issues relating to timing and uncertainty in administrative arrangements for the budgeting and charging of AEMO's NTP costs to transmission network service providers (TNSPs).

These errors became apparent in the process of implementing the Integrated System Planning Rule (ISP Rule), where both AEMO and TNSPs identified a number of administrative and transitional issues related to the budgeting and charging of NTP function fees to TNSPs.

The rule change request submitted by AEMO was narrow in scope and did not seek to change existing policy or to introduce new policy relating to the ISP Rules. In addition, the proposed changes are largely of an administrative nature, designed to facilitate the original policy intent of the ISP Rule.

Media: Kellie Bisset, Media and Content Manager M: 0438 490 041