The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) today published its first annual report into the performance of its fully regulated gas distribution networks, highlighting key outcomes and trends in energy network services.
Similar to our electricity network performance reports, it focuses on a core set of financial and non-financial performance measures, including profitability.
The report studied network performance over the 2011 to 2020 period with key findings revealing gas networks:
- experienced growth in residential customers, resulting in greater network revenue than in 2011 but cheaper pipeline services on average
- have been investing substantially in new connections and mains replacement programs to meet customer growth and replace aging assets
- have consistently generated above forecast returns – with both actual and forecast returns reducing with the lower cost of capital
- are inherently reliable with very low (although slightly rising) rates of outages.
In the future, this report will also investigate the emerging issues affecting our fully regulated gas networks. This will inform us and our stakeholders about how network regulation can continue to evolve and serve consumers’ long-term interests.
Background
The AER publishes network performance reports highlighting key outcomes and trends in energy network services. These easily accessible resources provide further transparency, accountability and insights into the performance of energy network service providers.
While our first electricity network performance report was released in 2020, the 2021 report is the first for gas networks and is based on historical data received from gas networks in late 2020.
The report looks at the six fully regulated gas distribution networks in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory. In 2022, we plan to expand our reporting to include fully regulated gas transmission networks.