The Retailer Reliability Obligation (RRO) is designed to support reliability in the National Electricity Market (NEM). The RRO is supported by a suite of AER guidelines, which provide detail on how the various stages of the RRO operate and impose obligations on entities involved in the RRO.
In addition to the AER’s specific roles in the administration of the RRO, the AER must monitor, investigate and enforce compliance with the RRO provisions.
Interim Contracts and Firmness Guidelines
On 30 August 2019 we published the interim Contracts and Firmness Guidelines and final determination document.
The Guidelines set out the AER’s approach to qualifying contracts, contract firmness methodology, the treatment of non-qualifying contracts, the approval process for non-standard qualifying contracts, the establishment and maintenance of an Auditors Panel, the submission of Net Contract Position (NCP) reports and certain information requirements of liable entities.
Minor, administrative changes were made to these Guidelines in October 2024 to account for the Integrating Energy Storage Systems rule change.
NCP report templates
Under the RRO, liable entities must submit an NCP report to the AER by the reporting day for each forecast reliability gap period. The NCP report demonstrates a liable entity’s NCP for the forecast reliability gap period, as it was on the contract position day. Section 9 of the Guidelines outlines the information and documents liable entities must include in the NCP report.
On 9 June 2023, the AER published the written report template and NCP excel report template which liable entities are required to complete and submit as part of their NCP report. These templates reflect the content of appendices A-E of the interim Contracts and Firmness Guidelines.
While they must contain the information set out in the interim Contracts and Firmness Guidelines, there are no specific templates for the other documents that liable entities must submit as part of the NCP report. These reports are:
- an Independent Auditors report/s (if any bespoke firmness methodologies have been applied to calculate firmness factors for non-standard qualifying contracts); and
- a document outlining any adjustments made for non-qualifying contracts that increase exposure to spot price volatility (if any adjustments have been made for non-qualifying contracts).
Prior to the reporting day for a forecast reliability gap period, the AER will contact relevant liable entities to provide them with directions on how to submit their NCP report, utilising a secure file sharing platform.
We invite liable entities to provide questions or feedback on the templates or other RRO matters electronically to RRO
aer [dot] gov [dot] au (RRO[at]aer[dot]gov[dot]au).