On 13 December 2024, we made a determination setting out the schedule of payments to ACEREZ for the main Central-West Orana REZ network project. A Network Operator is required to be paid by the Scheme Financial Vehicle in accordance with the schedule of payments contained in our revenue determination.

Under the Electricity Infrastructure Investment (EII) Regulations:

• The AER had 42 business days to make a determination from the date we received ACEREZ’s revenue proposal on 24 October 2024.
• The AER is able to rely on and adopt the outcomes of a competitive assessment process in our determination, if we are satisfied that the process was ‘genuine and appropriate’.

We monitored and reviewed the competitive processes that EnergyCo undertook for the project and are satisfied that the processes were ‘genuine and appropriate’. On this basis, and given that the revenue proposal from ACEREZ reflected the outcomes of EnergyCo’s competitive processes, we have confirmed the schedule of payments proposed by ACEREZ in our determination. The details of our assessment are set out in our determination.

The Regulations require us to publish our determination, subject to an assessment of non-disclosure claims. We have considered claims from EnergyCo and ACEREZ in accordance with the requirements of clause 53(4) of the Electricity Infrastructure Investment Regulation 2021 (EII Regulation). We have determined it is not appropriate for some material to be published following this process, and it has been redacted in the version of the determination published on 4 April 2025.