Our engagement approach is founded on Essential Energy's Stakeholder Engagement Framework and a commitment by our business leaders to recognise and value the benefits of working with customers and stakeholders to inform business decisions. We will listen and turn what we hear from engagement with customers, stakeholders and the community into a Regulatory Proposal that delivers the investments and services that customers value.

We will be

Large scale batteries are connected to either the distribution or transmission network. They can help to manage volatility in the network, improving the quality and reliability of electricity supply and reducing the likelihood of blackouts. They may also help to postpone investment in distribution assets which helps reduce prices for customers. We are looking at options to trial our first large scale battery in an area of the network with a growing population.

Take up of electric vehicles across Australia and globally is expanding and will be an important contributor to reducing carbon emissions. One factor affecting the uptake of electric vehicles is access to charging stations. Essential Energy will have a central role to play in this.

We are also looking at whether we should update our fleet to electric vehicles.

Currently, it is mainly electricity retailers that buy electricity from energy producers and sell this to customers. In the future, other market participants will provide new opportunities for customers to both buy and sell electricity.

For example, a customer with on-site generation such as a solar panel and battery may sell their spare electricity directly to another customer, such as their neighbour, instead of an electricity retailer. This is called Peer-to-Peer trading. The solar generation and battery capabilities of individual households and businesses could also be operated together, as a single coordinated power station. This is called a Virtual Power Plant.

Peer-to-Peer trading and Virtual Power Plants bring many advantages such as flexibility and improved power grid resilience. However, they also change the way that the distribution network is currently being used. If this is something that customers want then we need to ensure that our network is configured to allow these services to operate safely and securely.

Stand-Alone Power Systems (SAPS) are self-sufficient power generation systems designed to provide a continuous, reliable, off-grid supply of power. SAPS could be set up for properties at the end of long sections of powerlines or in heavily vegetated, remote or difficult to access areas to improve reliability by reducing the risk of unplanned outages. Introducing SAPS may also be more cost efficient than building or replacing powerlines, and so may help to reduce network costs (and hence prices) for customers.

Following the devastating 2019 bushfires, we used SAPS to restore supply to some customers affected by this event. We are using the learnings from this emergency response to inform a larger-scale roll-out of SAPS options for customers in remote, heavily vegetated or difficult to access locations.

We are also investigating alternative energy options for electricity supply. This includes trialling hydrogen SAPS, which produce hydrogen on site by electrolysis of water powered by solar panels.

We have also taken a leadership role in discussions with the regulator and Government agencies around establishing a framework that allows us to use SAPS in emergency response situations and in situations where costs could be lowered for consumers.

Microgrids use similar technologies to SAPS to provide continuous energy supply to a group of customers rather than just one customer.

We are working with a number of partners on microgrid projects, to better understand the feasibility of microgrids within our network. This includes working with NSW Farmers and Norco to assess the suitability of microgrids for farms, partnering with Enova in their Byron Bay community microgrid study, and participating in two community initiatives that have received Australian Government funding to assess the feasibility of microgrids in improving network resilience.

Through these projects we will gain a better understanding of how we can best meet our customers' current and future energy needs.

The NSW Government's Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap (Roadmap), is the NSW Government's policy to transition the electricity sector to reduced carbon emissions through investment and improved integration of renewables in dedicated Renewable Energy Zones - three of which are in our network area.

The roadmap intends to deliver approximately 12,000MW of additional generation capacity by 2030 in NSW Renewable Energy Zones and spur a possible $32 billion of investment in generation, storage and transmission over the next 10 years. The costs of the transition will be funded via charges on Essential Energy, which will subsequently be passed on to our customers.

The regulations which provide much of the detail of the roadmap will continue to be developed over 2022 and we are working with the NSW government to minimise the cost to customers.

The word resilience can mean different things to different people. We see resilience as the ability to anticipate, withstand, quickly recover and learn from disruptive events. We are interested to know whether customers and stakeholders agree with this definition and how they want us to adapt our network to improve resilience and support customers in the face of climate-related events.

Climate-related threats such as increasingly frequent high temperature days, and natural hazards such as floods, bushfires and cyclones, can have significant implications for electricity networks. With the severity and frequency of extreme weather events in Australia almost certain to increase due to climate change, the importance of network resilience is likely to continue to grow. Maintaining power supply is important for enabling communities to absorb and recover from extreme weather events.

As a business, we need to enhance our resilience and better understand and manage the increasing risks of a changing climate to our network. Severe climate events that were previously thought to occur on average only 'one in one-hundred-years' are now occurring more frequently. In the current regulatory period, for example, we experienced flooding in 2020 as well as the catastrophic 2019-20 bushfires across large parts of our network.

Watch our responses to the bushfires in South East NSW and the mid-north coast floods below. Note, some viewers may find the contents of these videos distressing.

The picture below depicts NSW bushfires for the period 1926 to 2019. In this time there have been 3,836 fires that burnt greater than 10 hectares.

Bushfires are increasing in intensity and frequency particularly across southern Australia according to the Bureau of Meteorology's 2020 State of the Climate report (State of the Climate 2020: Bureau of Meteorology (bom.gov.au)). Between 2008 and 2013 there was a 40 percent increase in the number of bushfires in Australia (abc.net.au).

Similarly, the estimated number of days of high to catastrophic fire danger is also expected to continue to increase. This reflects increasing temperatures, with three of the driest and hottest years on record occurring in the last 10 years.

To enhance the resilience of our network in response to bushfires, we are installing poles made from composite material in high-risk areas, which can withstand significant heat and fire damage, and are also termite resistant.

Trimming or removing trees to maintain a safe distance from our network remains a high priority for us. This reduces bushfire risk and helps to protect the network from damage and potential power outages during storms.

Managing vegetation is also directly linked to the reliability of electricity supply.

As mentioned in the Network of the Future banner, Stand-Alone Power Systems (SAPS) are a useful technology for some parts of our network given they generate electricity on-site, and do not rely on our network. This means they are less affected by natural disasters, such as bushfires. SAPS can allow the resupply of energy to customers after natural disasters quicker than the traditional poles and wires network and we used them as part of our response to the 2019-20 bushfires.

With the removal of long powerlines, the installation of SAPS reduce the potential for bushfires being started by our network assets. SAPS also have the potential to enable a customer or community to isolate itself and remain energised in a bushfire emergency. This is particularly important for keeping telecommunication towers and fire-fighting equipment operational.

We are using learnings from our response to the 2019-20 bushfires to determine how to best use SAPS in response to future emergencies and to areas where the cost of rebuilding the network might be high.

As part of the SAPS program, we are also investigating alternative energy options for electricity supply. This includes trialling hydrogen SAPS, which produce hydrogen on site by electrolysis of water powered by solar panels.

While SAPS are more commonly installed to provide power to a single customer, we can also create small, low-voltage microgrids that can supply multiple customers in a location and also enhance network resilience. These were also discussed in the Network of the Future banner.

We are working with a number of partners on microgrid projects, to better understand the feasibility of microgrids within our network.

The reliability of electricity supply is measured by the number of supply interruptions and how long such supply interruptions last.

In 2020-21, our customers experienced an average of 1.7 unplanned power supply outages over the year and the average time per year that our customers were affected by unplanned power supply interruptions was 215 minutes. Our reliability performance has been fairly consistent for close to a decade now, though the breadth of our network and its exposure to the elements mean our customers can experience differing levels of reliability in different areas.

As an essential service, our network is considered to be critical infrastructure. This means we must meet the conditions outlined in Federal legislation to help protect our network from cyber security threats and other hazards that could interrupt the supply of power. Amendments to the Critical Infrastructure Bill are currently before Parliament and we will need to comply with any new obligations. The costs to meet critical infrastructure requirements form part of our network charges that customers pay.

Over recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of residential and small business customers with solar panels.

These technologies have played a valuable role in increasing Australia's supply of renewable energy. However, the large number of systems and their growing size poses some challenges for the electricity network. 'Traffic jams' can occur when a large number of customers export their solar energy at the same time into a grid originally built for one-way energy flows. Such traffic jams can mean we have to limit solar exports or, in the worst case, not even connect new solar customers to the network. Traffic jams can also impact on the quality and reliability of electricity supply to other customers.

Batteries and electric vehicles can help reduce this pressure, but even they must be carefully managed to ensure they do not create new problems for the network. For example, if people come home from work and plug their electric vehicle in to charge at 5pm, or if lots of batteries charge from the grid at the same time, we will exacerbate our existing peak demand or create new load peaks. Similarly, if these technologies discharge quickly into the network, they can cause voltage issues which can also affect reliability.

We are working with industry, electricity retailers and other energy market parties to ensure that our network has the required capacity to meet increasing export demand and also accommodate these new distributed energy resources safely and without compromising reliability.

Essential Energy provides public lighting services, mainly streetlights, to local councils. We install, repair, maintain and replace public lighting, alter and relocate existing lights as well as provide and construct new and emerging public lighting technology. We bill Councils for providing these services though, in turn, customers pay for these services through their Council rates.

While Councils can install their own private lights, Essential Energy is in a unique position to provide this service given our existing network infrastructure, technical capability, access rights and ability to provide 24/7 operation and maintenance services across our entire network area.

Your meter type is linked to the network prices we charge, as well as the pricing options available to you.

There are many different types of electricity meters, however, they can be broadly classed into two groups.

Since 1 December 2017, when Power of Choice legislation came into effect, all new and replacement meters must be a smart meter and are organised and managed through electricity retailers. Prior to this, Essential Energy installed, maintained and read all electricity meters, however we now service only the basic accumulation meters in our network area. The prices for our metering services are set by the regulator.

Ancillary network services is the broad term used to summarise the large number of diverse, non-routine services we provide to customers on an as-needs basis. Examples of ancillary network services include assessing and processing connection applications, and customer requested power pole relocations.

The cost of each ancillary network service is paid for by the individual customer requesting and receiving it. The prices for these services are set by the regulator.