The Default market offer (DMO) came into effect on 1 July 2019.
The DMO is an electricity price ‘safety net’ protecting consumers from unjustifiably high prices, while also allowing retailers to recover costs. It is the maximum price an electricity retailer can charge standing offer customers.
The DMO price for each area also acts as a ‘reference price’ for residential and small business offers in that area. When advertising or promoting offer pricing, retailers must show the price of their offer in comparison to the DMO/reference price. This assists customers when comparing the price of different offers.
The Competition and Consumer (Industry Code – Electricity Retail) Regulations 2019 sets out the legislative framework for the DMO.
The AER’s role is to determine DMO prices annually. This is the seventh time we will determine DMO prices. As such we refer to the DMO for 2025–26 as ‘DMO 7’.
Our DMO price determination applies to residential and small business customers in New South Wales, south-east Queensland and South Australia.
Issues paper
On 11 October 2024 we released the issues paper for DMO 7. As part of the consultation process, we hosted 2 in-person retailer workshops, held one-on-one meetings with several stakeholders and on 14 November 2024 presented to the AER’s Customer Consultative Group to discuss topics raised in the issues paper. 15 written submissions were received.