This blog is to introduce you to the work of the Powercor, Citipower and United Energy customer advisory panel.

These three businesses are responsible for ensuring that people in western Victoria, the Melbourne CBD, Bayside and the Mornington Peninsula get a reliable supply of energy into their home or business. In total they have over two million customers, and the services they provide – known as electricity distribution – account for a sizeable chunk of the average electricity bill.

But while you can choose the retailer you buy your energy from, you can’t decide which distributor to use. It only makes sense to have one set of poles and wires outside your house or business.

Each of the three networks is overseen by the Australian Energy Regulator, which has to consider what is in the long-term interests of consumers. But how can customers be sure that the businesses have their interests at heart, as part of the culture not just a regulatory requirement? This is where the Customer Advisory Panel (CAP) comes in.

The CAP has existed for several years in various forms, and most recently has provided advice and challenge on how the three networks have developed their multi-million dollar investment proposals for 2026-31. The networks have now formally submitted their proposals to the regulator – you can see the CAP’s views on them here:

• CAP report on Powercor proposal
• CAP report on CitiPower proposal

The CAP has now moved into a new phase of its work and become a smaller group for the remainder of 2025.

It’s my privilege to chair the CAP. I live in Bayside Melbourne and so I’m a United Energy customer. My background is in consumer advocacy and regulation, representing customers in a variety of sectors but particularly energy and financial services. Hilary Newstead is the deputy chair; her experience is in major industrial users of energy and she’s amongst other things a board member of the Energy Users Association of Australia. Alongside us are four highly experienced members: Gavin Dufty who leads energy advocacy work at Vinnies; research and insight expert Helen Bartley; energy and sustainability champion Dean Lombard; and rural advocate Natalie Collard, who leads Farmers for Climate Action. You can see more about each of us here.

We’ll be doing more regular posts from now on, to tell you about how we’re representing customers across the three networks and the kind of issues that we’re helping the businesses grapple with.

Our first meeting as a group of six members was in May when we focused on both the investment plans for 2026-31 and also the ongoing work of the three networks. Items included how the networks will engage customers – both residential and business – over the next few months, their response to our comments on their investment plans, and the set of customer commitments being developed for 2026-31. We also discussed how the networks can best support customer in vulnerable circumstances, and a trial to take advantage of renewable energy when it is most abundant, through the provision of hot water to ‘controlled load’ customers. You can see our meeting papers and minutes here.

We have and have at least three further meetings scheduled for 2025. I’ll be blogging again about these meetings, and we’ll also write about particular topics that we think are important and likely to be of particular interest to Powercor, CitiPower and United Energy customers. But in the meantime thanks for reading this and please don’t hesitate to reach out to the CAP about our work on behalf of customers. You can contact us by asking a question on this page here.