The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) today published and is seeking stakeholder feedback on its Enhanced Wholesale Market Monitoring and Reporting Guideline issues paper (the issues paper).
The issues paper comes as the AER’s wholesale market monitoring and reporting functions are soon expanding to include wholesale gas markets and electricity and gas contract markets.
Access to contracts and related information will provide visibility of the underlying drivers influencing how and why market participants behave the way they do, whether the outcomes in wholesale markets reflect effective competition in those markets, and whether wholesale markets are operating efficiently. It will also provide valuable insight for understanding how retail markets are impacted by wholesale markets.
Our improved market understanding and insights will be used to expand and enhance our existing suite of reports, providing timely and transparent information to market participants, policy makers and consumers throughout and beyond the energy transition.
Consultation
We are interested in stakeholder views on:
- our approach to wholesale market monitoring and reporting.
- what information we should routinely collect and what types and classes of information should not be collected.
- our proposed targeted, incremental approach to data collection and our initial focus areas, as well as views on any alternative areas that we should consider.
- whether there are any other agencies that we might consider exploring information sharing arrangements with.
- the efficient collection of information.
- the operationalisation of the AER’s disclosure and procedural fairness policies and frameworks.
An online forum to discuss the issues paper will be held at 9.30 am on 9 April 2024, with submissions due 23 April 2024.
Background
One of the AER’s key functions is to monitor and report on the performance of wholesale markets.
We deliver our function by reporting on the performance of wholesale markets via a range of public reports that provide timely information underpinned by expert and transparent analysis.
Our regular reporting exists to provide confidence in our energy systems, supports efficient decision making by market participants, and well-informed decision making by policy makers.
To date, we have relied primarily on public information to assess the performance of wholesale markets. This information provides us with an understanding of market participants’ conduct within, and outcomes of, wholesale markets. However, publicly available information provides very limited visibility of market participants’ contracting behaviour.
Through the collection and monitoring of contract related information we will build a more holistic well-formed view of wholesale markets which will significantly improve our capability to evaluate performance, competition, and efficiency in these markets.