The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has today released an options paper on the 2022-23 Default Market Offer (DMO) price determination for consultation.
The DMO price is the maximum price a retailer can charge a standing offer customer in south-east Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia. It seeks to prevent retailers charging unjustifiably high prices to customer on standing offers, while maintaining market competition and participation.
The AER’s options paper is the first step in the process in setting the 2022-23 DMO prices.
The AER is reviewing the approach to setting the DMO to ensure it continues to meet the policy objectives.
The AER is seeking views on a number of aspects of the pricing methodology including how we:
- take into account retail costs, including how they change from year to year
- approach forecasting wholesale electricity costs
- should treat costs to serve customers with advanced meters, or customers on time of use tariffs
- set ‘model annual usage’, including ensuring our residential and small business annual usage benchmarks are ‘broadly representative’.
The AER invites people to register for an online forum at 1.30–3 pm Wednesday 10 November 2021. At the forum we will outline key matters discussed in the options paper and respond to stakeholder questions. Register attendance before 5 November 2021.
The draft 2022-23 DMO will be released in early 2022 for consultation, with the final published by May 2022 to come into effect on 1 July 2022.
Invitation for submissions
Interested parties are invited to make a submission on the options paper by close of business Friday 19 November 2021. We prefer that all submissions are in Microsoft Word or another text readable document format. Submissions should be emailed to DMO
aer [dot] gov [dot] au (DMO[at]aer[dot]gov[dot]au) or alternatively submissions can be posted to:
Ms Stephanie Jolly
General Manager, Market Performance
Australian Energy Regulator
GPO Box 3131, Canberra ACT 2601
We will also accept verbal submissions on the consultation issues. We request that stakeholders who wish to do so contact us at DMOaer [dot] gov [dot] au (DMO[at]aer[dot]gov[dot]au) to discuss in the first instance.
We prefer that all submissions be publicly available to facilitate an informed and transparent consultative process. Submissions will be treated as public documents unless otherwise requested. Parties wishing to submit confidential information should:
- clearly identify the information that is the subject of the confidentiality claim
- provide a non-confidential version of the submission in a form suitable for publication.
All non-confidential submissions will be placed on our website. For further information regarding our use and disclosure of information provided to us, see the ACCC/AER Information Policy