The evaluation sessions engaged with residential and small-medium business customers to understand the trade-offs being made between proposed discretionary initiatives.

The discretionary initiatives tested has three to four proposed improvement levels with an additional cost associated with each level. These costs would impact the average annual energy bill for residential and small-medium business customers.

The discretionary initiatives considered included:

• worst served customers
• network and community resilience
• large scale renewable energy
• supporting additional solar energy exports
• regional and rural supply
• electrification
• average reliability.

The purpose of the program was to understand the trade-offs customers make between their willingness to pay for discretionary initiatives and the respective outcomes of service level improvements.

What you told us

• The majority of customers were in support of improving service levels of each initiative presented, except Reliability. The majority of customers wanted reliability to be at least maintained, as they were satisfied with current service.
• Compared to residential customers, small to medium business customers were typically more cost-sensitive, with a higher proportion preferencing ‘zero cost’ options more consistently.
• Overall, there was an even split between customers’ willingness to pay across outlined service levels, with most wanting improvements to some degree.
• Residential and small to medium business customers recognised the value of investing in discretionary initiatives beyond compliance costs to achieve service level improvements. However, they were unwilling to invest in the proposed maximum bill impacts associated with the highest level of improvement across initiatives.
• Customers expressed a desire for Powercor to make service level improvements that resulted in more equitable service across the community, feeling that the energy distributor was best placed in making improvements to enhance network resilience and improve performance for worst served customers.

What's next

The outcomes from the trade-off evaluations report are being used to refine investments being built into the 2026-2031 regulatory proposal, due for release in September 2024.