The proposed National Energy Retail Law includes new arrangements which seek to ensure that customers maintain continuity of supply in the event that their retailer fails by automatically transferring the customers to another retailer (the retailer of last resort (RoLR)).
The AER will be responsible for administering several aspects of the national RoLR scheme, including making determinations on proposed RoLR cost recovery schemes. RoLR cost recovery schemes allow RoLRs to recover reasonable costs incurred in preparing for and following a RoLR event.
Today the AER has published an issues on it obligations under the National Retail Law regarding RoLR cost recovery. This paper is available at the AER's website. The AER has also recently published a RoLR registration and appointment issues paper and a RoLR plan issues paper.
The AER invites written submissions on these issues papers. Submissions should be sent to AERInquiry
aer [dot] gov [dot] au (AERInquiry[at]aer[dot]gov[dot]au) by 22 December 2010.
As noted previously, the AER will hold a stakeholder forum on Wednesday 1 December 2010 from 2pm to 5pm (AEST) to discuss all of the RoLR issues papers. AER staff will be located in Melbourne for this forum, but there will be video conference links to all capital cities in participating jurisdictions. To register your participation at the forum, please send an email to AERInquiryaer [dot] gov [dot] au (AERInquiry[at]aer[dot]gov[dot]au) by 29 November 2010, indicating the city in which you will attend. The subject of the email should state "Registration for RoLR scheme forum: attention Dominique Chivers". Registration for the forum is essential as spaces are limited. Stakeholders are asked to nominate no more than one participant each.