The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has published the approved 2024–25 pricing proposal for Essential Energy for its New South Wales and southern regional Queensland electricity distribution network.
This follows a thorough assessment by the AER of the pricing proposal and proposed drivers to ensure they are consistent with the National Electricity Rules and the 2024–29 revenue determinations.
Essential Energy proposed increases to network tariffs this year, consistent with the distribution revenue path set in our 2024–29 revenue determination. Other significant drivers are inflation, increased transmission costs and increased NSW Roadmap costs. Other factors include adjustments for previous over‑recovered allowed revenues for each distributor.
Our Statement of Reasons provides a summary of the changes in network charges and demand forecasts.
These network charges will be incorporated into retail electricity prices by 1 July 2024. Retailers ultimately determine how these underlying network tariffs are reflected in the retail prices offered to customers.
The network prices approved by the AER are unchanged from the proposed prices used in our final 2024–25 Default Market Offer, which was released on 23 May.
View the approved proposals and our Statement of Reasons here.
We recently approved network tariffs for all other electricity distribution networks. This concludes the annual pricing approval process for the 2024–25 year.
Background
Electricity bills are made up of the wholesale costs, retail margins, and network charges. Our annual pricing review relates only to the network charges component of the bill. In most instances network charges make up less than half of the retail bill.
Every year electricity distributors submit a pricing proposal to us that contains the network tariffs they propose to charge their customers to recover their revenues, transmission network charges and costs of jurisdictional schemes.