• Jemena customers with a smart meter are able to access Jemena’s Self Service Portal.
• This means you can view your electricity usage and sign up for power outage alerts.

We have videos that can show you how to register and how to use the portal.

Find out more

• Community batteries are a key part of Australia’s shift to renewable electricity. In terms of size, they sit somewhere between household batteries and massive, grid-scale batteries.
• Batteries installed in distribution networks like Jemena's, aim to soak up excess rooftop solar during the day and discharge at times when the sun isn’t shining.
• Jemena Electricity Networks has been awarded up to $2 million in funding to deliver community batteries through the Australian Government’s Community Batteries for Household Solar Program.
• Jemena will deliver community batteries to service Alphington, Bellfield, Coburg and Flemington.

Find out more.

• The regulatory framework incentivises JEN to distribute electricity to our customers safely and reliably at the most efficient cost.
• This is achieved through two main incentive schemes—the capital expenditure efficiency sharing scheme (CESS) and the efficiency benefit sharing scheme (EBSS).
• These two schemes reward Jemena for efficiency in managing our business while also providing a way for sharing savings with our customers through our network prices.

• Networks deliver electricity to customers. The cost to build, maintain and operate network infrastructure (electricity poles and wires) and resources (people).
• JEN reports annual regulatory data and information to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER). This information is publicly available on the AER's website and includes data relating to JEN’s capital and operating costs.

• One of the most significant costs for electricity distribution businesses is capital expenditure in the construction, maintenance and upgrade of network infrastructure including poles, wires, meters and other assets.
• Another significant cost is operational and maintenance costs. These include operational expenditure for running our business such as employing staff, managing and monitoring systems, ongoing costs for maintaining infrastructure such as vegetation management and repairs, and other costs.
• There are also other significant costs in managing an electricity distribution business. This includes the cost of accessing finance to be able to fund investment and costs of running the business, taxes and other factors.

• JEN’s revenue (billed to a customer’s retailer) is made up of several key components:
  • a return on capital, which compensates the business for the capital that has been invested in the network
  • regulatory depreciation, which allows investors to recover their investment over the useful life of the assets required to operate the network
  • operating expenditure
  • other items including tax allowances and expenditure incentive schemes.
• There are drivers behind this cost, some include replacing old part of the distribution network and maintaining the grid in good working order.

• A reduction in gas usage is likely to increase electricity consumption/usage, as more people will rely on electricity for heating, hot water and cooking.
• Peak demand on the JEN network may also shift from summer (summer peaking) to winter (winter peaking) as more people rely on electricity to heat their homes. This may contribute to an increase in capital costs, as JEN will need to ensure that it can meet peak demand and distribute electricity when customers most need it.
• Whilst the impact is yet to be seen, we anticipate the electricity grid will utilise more and therefore the “network” costs should come down. In the long term this reduction in cost will be passed to customers in the form of a lower cost per kWh.
• Also, whilst electricity bills will go up because more electricity appliances are being used, this will be offset by:
  • lower c/kWh
  • offsetting the gas bill savings
• These should contribute to a net overall savings for customers.

Customers working from home have not impacted the price of electricity. However, there are many other factors that go into getting electricity to your home, and these do have an impact on electricity prices:

• Generators produce electricity and sell it to retailers. These costs can vary depending on underlying supply and demand conditions and other factors, including temperature and weather conditions.
• Networks deliver electricity to customers. The cost to build, maintain and operate network infrastructure (electricity poles and wires) can go up or down, but are generally quite stable.
• Retailer costs cover things like: account management, bill management, and customer service.

Delivering these services can cause electricity prices to rise and fall.

• Jemena is responsible for distributing electricity to all customers for all of their appliances in the north-west of Melbourne. This includes providing electricity used to power electric vehicles.
• We do not provide electric vehicle charging points (on street, at your office, or at your home), but we do supply the electricity to the premises that connects charging point devices.

• Jemena is responsible for distributing electricity to all customers for all of their appliances in the north-west of Melbourne. This includes providing electricity used to power electric vehicles.
• We do not provide electric vehicle charging points (on street, at your office or at your home), but we do supply electricity to the premises that connects charging point devices.

• We recognise our key role in helping support our customers to adopt EVs and charge their EV in our network.

• Jemena is leading work to help integrate EVs into our energy system and prepare distribution networks for the future uptake of EVs. For example, Jemena is leading a 12-month EV grid trial with other energy businesses to gain an understanding of impacts on network conditions, how to forecast when EVs are charged, consumer behaviour and other factors.

• An embedded network is where electricity is supplied to a multiple-tenant premises (for example an apartment complex or retirement village) that is privately owned with a managed supplier rather than a licensed retailer.
• Embedded network managers buy electricity in bulk and then on-sell it to their customers.
• If you live in an embedded network, you may not be able to choose your electricity supplier but you still have rights.
• The amount you can be charged for your electricity is capped.

Find out more.

Our Emergency Management Plan supports the actions of an established Emergency Management Team (EMT) and Incident Management Team (IMT) when responding to emergencies, this includes:

• Effective decision-making for emergency events.
• Effective identification, assessment and escalation of events.
• Effective recording of actions, decisions and management of the supporting systems available to activated teams.
• Supports the post-event review of activations for future improvement.
• Outlines the requirements for training and exercising.

• We have a key responsibility to make decisions about management of our network in a way that promotes the interests of our customers throughout the energy transition.
• The energy transition offers many opportunities and challenges for electricity distribution businesses including Jemena, in relation to promoting the reliability, safety, affordability and sustainability of our services to customers.
• In addition to direct decisions about managing our network, we can have a role in influencing decisions of others such as governments and regulators, during the energy transition to promote the interests of our customers.
• We recognise the importance of engaging closely with our customers to understand their needs and expectations so that we can acquire these responsibilities.

• We have a range of key choices to make in relation to the energy transition including:

1. The types of services we provide into the future to our customers and other stakeholders.
2. The investments we make in our network in order to support us to provide services, for example to support the adoption of solar Panels and electric vehicles.
3. The prices we charge customers and other stakeholders, and how costs of managing our network are shared across customers and other stakeholders.
4. How to share benefits of the energy transition with our customers including efficiencies and savings in managing our network
5. How to advocate for our customers’ interests during the energy transition including in government reforms and regulatory decisions

• We need our customers’ input to help us to decide which choices to make and ensure that we manage the network in a way that meets our customers’ needs and expectations.

• In preparing our regulatory proposal for the Australian Energy Regulator, we apply the principles required under the National Electricity Rules for our proposed expenditure. This includes:
  • meeting or managing expected demand for services in our network
  • complying with regulatory obligations or requirements
  • maintaining the quality, reliability and security of our provision of services
  • maintaining the reliability, security and safety of our network.
• The Australian Energy Market Commission is responsible for making changes to the National Electricity Rules. It is currently considering adding a principle for us to consider how our proposed investment will contribute to meeting emissions reductions targets.
• We also must make investment decisions flexibly to respond to changing circumstances.

To find out more about how we are promoting sustainability through our investment decisions, you can read our Sustainability Report.

We recognise that making promises may not be enough to gain your confidence, but we hope that showing you what we currently do for our customers now and what we’ve done previously, may demonstrate our commitment to doing our best for our customers in this upcoming price reset:

• Jemena is the only Victorian network that has signed up to a voluntary industry code – “the Energy Charter.”
• As reported in our sustainability report, Jemena has a bold commitment to our community – backed up through the Corporate Social Responsibility program.
• In previous price resets, our customer engagement participants reported increased levels of trust through the process.
• Jemena is at the forefront of customer engagement in the industry, winning the 2019 industry award and being a finalist in the Asia Pacific IAP2 awards.
• But most of all, we can report that we have delivered on 12 of the 13 initiatives our 2018 People's Panel asked of us.

We will continue to uphold this scorecard through our commitment to this upcoming Price Reset and seek your feedback throughout the process.

25% of Jemena’s electricity network customers are aged 60 and above, accounting for approximately 87,500 of our customers.

• Connecting rooftop solar generation to the electricity network is driven by customer demand – Jemena is not preventing rooftop solar generation.
• There may be reasons our customers are not taking up this option, including affordability, not having rooftop space (for example, living in apartments) and income levels.
• We also observe some other barriers including a reluctance of landlords to allow solar generation.
• More recently, we have seen an uplift in applications, in part due to more generous subsidies by the Victorian Government and rising electricity pricing.

• We are a customer focused organisation, with a focus on customer’s being one of our core values.
• In a process like customer engagement, we believe the best way to get our customers’ views is by speaking to them directly.

• As a distribution business, Jemena is responsible for distributing electricity to customers from the energy system regardless of how it is generated.
• However, Jemena has a critical role in influencing the adoption of distributed energy resources like solar Panels and batteries. Our decision-making about investing in assets (poles, wires etc) in our network, influence whether these resources can access the grid and how much electricity they can export for other people to use.
• The Australian Energy Market Operator has forecast that a lot of the electricity that the energy system will need in the future will need to be generated by distributed energy resources like solar Panels.
• We advocate to the Australian Energy Regulator and the Victorian Government for decisions to be made to support more distributed energy resources being adopted into the future.

• Jemena distributes electricity to homes and businesses; it does not generate electricity.
• Wholesale market operators determine the generation mix, i.e. whether electricity is generated using coal, gas, hydro resources, solar or wind.
• JEN can determine how much electricity is generated using rooftop solar Panels, including how much electricity is exported back on to the network.

• Jemena is responsible for distributing electricity to all customers in the north-west of Melbourne. To distribute electricity we use poles, wires and transformers, amongst other apparatus. Substations are the hosing for some of these transformers used to step down voltages and Jemena own many of these to perform the tasks of distributing electricity to our customers.

• There are a lot of different roles for organisations and businesses involved in providing electricity to homes. This includes running power plants, managing the assets (like poles and wires that are Jemena’s responsibility) to transport electricity to people’s homes, buying and selling electricity in the electricity market, and providing customer service.
• In Victoria, government policy decisions were made in the past for these roles to be performed by lots of different businesses in the private sector.
• Having different energy businesses undertaking these roles is aimed at helping each business focus on becoming experts in their particular area, becoming more efficient so that they can reduce costs for customers, and managing the level of risk involved in supplying electricity to customers.

• Jemena needs a wide range of different technologies to manage our network. This includes electrical equipment like poles, wires, transformers, meters, as well as computer systems like our control rooms and connections with the rest of the energy system.
• A lot of the technologies we use are standard across electricity networks. In these cases, we engage other businesses to buy ‘off the shelf’ technology and equipment to help us run our network.
• Sometimes we need special, customised solutions to solve issues and manage our network. In these cases, we often work with other businesses to develop these new technology solutions and implement them in our network.

• Decisions about installing public lighting (including streetlights) are generally made by local councils, VicRoads in relation to arterial roads, and other bodies. Distribution businesses like Jemena are responsible for working with these parties in relation to installing and maintaining public lighting.
• Jemena maintains over 78,000 streetlights over our electricity distribution area. Standards for public lighting are set under the Essential Services Commission’s Public Lighting Code and other rules.
• Jemena’s costs in relation to public lighting services are not included in your electricity bill – they are charged to local councils, VicRoads. These bodies may choose to pass on the costs through council rates and other sorts of charges

• Jemena needs to account for a range of drivers, trends and requirements to manage the network and make efficient, prudent investment decisions. This includes the reliability of electricity services, as well as preparing our network for emerging and current trends such as the adoption of electric vehicles, batteries and other modern technologies.
• Input from our customers will be critical when making appropriate investment decisions that reflect our customers’ views and expectations of their electricity network. We seek to understand how our customers expect to be able to use electricity in the future and what decisions we need to make to support our customers’ energy goals.

• The price reset process involves the Australian Energy Regulator deciding on the network prices we charge our customers for running the distribution network. These prices are only one part of the costs on an energy bill. Energy bills do not get normalised across distribution networks – it is up to your retailer how they set their retail prices.
• In approving network prices, the regulator normalises some approaches between electricity networks by applying the same method for each network – for example, when considering inflation and other standard factors.
• However, the regulator mostly tries to take account for the different costs involved in distributing electricity in each network. For example, some electricity networks covering regional areas face more costs in managing vegetation and bushfire risks than Jemena’s network. The regulator seeks to approve prices that represent each network’s efficient costs of providing energy services to their customers, based on each network’s individual circumstances.
• Whilst there is no direct normalization of prices across distribution businesses, the regulator does look at the costs each distribution business incurs and then compares them using complex benchmarking techniques. If the regulator determines that one business is inefficient relative to its peers, it will reduce the revenue that distribution business can earn. Through benchmarking, there is some “indirect” normalisation of pricing.

• We continuously monitor electricity demand in our network and take account of trends in demand in preparing our price reset proposals for approval by the Australian Energy Regulator.
• While changes in where people work may have influenced electricity demand levels to some extent, changes in demand have recently been largely driven by more influential factors such as the uptake of solar systems, changing weather and climate conditions, and commercial and industrial demand.
• People who work at home can also take advantage of solar systems by generating their own electricity and using it throughout the day.
• We are keen to hear our people’s panel members’ views on this topic in future tariff discussion.

• Most of Jemena’s profit margins are determined by the Australian Energy Regulator (AER). The AER assesses what an efficient electricity distribution business should earn by considering many factors such as what similar infrastructure businesses earn and prevailing interest rates. They undertake this review every three to four years.
• In addition, to these margins, Jemena shares in benefits if it can outperform expenditure targets; similarly, if Jemena cannot outperform these targets, Jemena incurs a penalty.

• The Regulatory Proposal will include a lot of detail on pricing such as:
  • The services we provide.
  • How we propose to invest in the network and operate it on a day-to-day basis.
  • The regulatory methods to determine our revenue needs.
  • How we will charge each customer’s retailer for the services we provide.

• An example of what is included can be found in the 2021-26 Regulatory Proposal. This contains the breakdown of pricing and our ‘revenue building blocks’ for our network services.
• You can find The 2021 - 2026 Regulatory Proposal here.

We will also talk more about this in Session 2.

We recognise that making promises may not be enough to gain your confidence, but we hope that showing you what we currently do for our customers now and what we’ve done previously, may demonstrate our commitment to doing our best for our customers in this upcoming price reset:

• Jemena is the only Victorian network that has signed up to a voluntary industry code – “the Energy Charter.”
• As reported in our sustainability report, Jemena has a bold commitment to our community – backed up through the Corporate Social Responsibility program.
• In previous price resets, our customer engagement participants reported increased levels of trust through the process.
• Jemena is at the forefront of customer engagement in the industry, winning the 2019 industry award and being a finalist in the Asia Pacific IAP2 awards.
• But most of all, we can report that we have delivered on 12 of the 13 initiatives our 2018 People's Panel asked of us.

We will continue to uphold this scorecard through our commitment to this upcoming Price Reset and seek your feedback throughout the process.

• Electricity retailers are responsible for:
  • Working with distribution businesses such as Jemena to connect customers to the electricity network.
  • Providing customer service (telephone and online) and managing customer enquiries
  • Managing the costs of upstream services. such as generation and networks charges.
  • Providing information to customers about their bill.
  • Issuing a bill.
  • Responding to bill disputes.
  • Responding to customers who may have payment difficulties.

The Energy Services Commission’s Energy Retail Code of Practice sets out the rules electricity retailers must follow when selling energy to Victorian customers.

You can compare electricity offers by visiting the Victorian Government ‘Compare energy’ website

Find out more.

• Jemena is responsible for distributing electricity to all customers for all of their appliances in the north-west of Melbourne. This includes providing electricity used to power electric vehicles.
• We do not provide electric vehicle charging points (on street, at your office, or at your home), but we do supply the electricity to the premises that connects charging point devices.

• The State Electricity Commission (SEC) will invest an initial $1 billion towards building 4.5 gigawatts of renewable energy and storage projects – enough to power around 1.5 million homes.
• The SEC will take over the Victorian Government’s Renewable Energy Target projects by 2025 – which amount to 1.2 gigawatts of renewable energy generation in addition to the 4.5 gigawatts.
• This will help power every public hospital, school, police station and government building with renewables, helping to achieve the target for all Victorian Government operations and facilities to be powered by 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2025.

Find out more.

• Jemena has an Environmental, Social and Governance Plan or 'ESG'.
• The plan outlines the steps we're taking to create a more sustainable future and how our performance is tracking.
• We regularly 'check-in' and measure our performance against the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) set out in the plan to ensure compliance.
• Jemena invests every year in innovation and technology, and partners with others in the pursuit of sustainable, renewable energy. This is outlined in our Sustainability Report.

Find out more.

• Our shared vision is: Creating sustainable energy solutions with communities.
• We are focussed on responding to the dual challenges of evolving our business as part of the energy transition, while also upholding the reliability and safety standards which have become synonymous with how we manage and operate our energy assets.
• Find out more

• As a distribution business, Jemena is responsible for distributing electricity to customers from the energy system regardless of how it is generated.
• However, Jemena has a role in influencing the uptake of renewable energy, particularly distributed energy resources like solar, used in our network.
• Jemena makes investment decisions including through the price reset process about how to manage our network to enable more distributed energy resources to be adopted and to allow customers with these resources to export their electricity for others to use.
• The Australian Energy Market Operator has forecast that a lot of the electricity that the energy system will need in the future will need to be generated by distributed energy resources like solar.

• The reliability of any source of electricity generation depends on a lot of factors.
• Some types of renewable energy are called ‘variable renewable energy’ (or ‘intermittent renewable energy’) which means that the electricity that they generate varies at different times. For example, the electricity generated by wind farms varies based on wind conditions and the electricity generated by solar panels depends on the amount of solar exposure.
• The electricity output of variable renewable energy can be stored in batteries, pumped hydro and other forms of storage to be used at other times like the morning and evening peak times of electricity use.
• The electricity output of other forms of renewable energy isn’t so variable. For example, hydroelectricity and biomass energy can provide ‘baseload’ power which is a continuous amount of power needed to keep the energy system running. However, the reliability of these energy sources depends on some factors too.
• Relying on a mix of energy sources, including variable renewable energy, reduces dependence on a single energy source and increases the reliability of the energy system.

• Uptake of solar systems has many benefits for the energy system and how customers use their energy, including by helping customers reduce their energy bills. However, Jemena needs to make careful investment decisions to help manage risks from the rapid uptake of solar including overvoltage and impacts on minimum system load.
• Jemena is considering trialling new technologies to help change the local level of voltage in areas of the network. This will improve the quality of electricity supplied on our network and help solar customers export their electricity safely to the grid.
• The uptake of solar is also impacting the supply-demand balance as less electricity is drawn from the grid and solar customers seek to export their electricity. Through Victorian Government reforms, Jemena and other distribution businesses are implementing new systems and technologies as a last resort measures to manage solar systems in case of an emergency supply-demand imbalance.

• Setting a minimum price is implementing a floor price. The milk code is important to protect suppliers, who may not have the market or bargaining power of the customers (processors) they sell the milk to.
• In some ways, governments have set floor prices for solar by implementing minimum feed-in tariffs for solar exports. Retailers in Victoria must pay the minimum feed-in tariff determined annually by the Essential Services Commission. Retailers can choose to pay more, but never less, similar to milk processors under the dairy code.
• However, this feed-in tariff does not address network costs to build energy infrastructure to transport the electrons. In the dairy code example, a farmer and the processor can make a deal between themselves, but the dairy code doesn’t cover who pays the transport company providing trucks to transfer the milk. Networks that implement export tariffs would charge retailers for the transport of the electrons in an amount that would reflect the network’s efficient transport cost. Retailers can then choose how and in what form to pass these costs on to their end customers.

• Solar uptake must continue to be incentivised to enable uptake into the future. The Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan indicates that a significant amount of distributed solar generation capacity will be needed to meet the future needs of the energy system and to help decarbonise the system. Solar systems also provide significant benefits to customers including enabling them to generate their own electricity and thereby cut their electricity bills.
• Distribution businesses like Jemena are responsible for investing in electricity networks to ensure that they can manage solar uptake and maximise the benefits of adopting solar. Jemena forecasts necessary investments in our network to support solar uptake and provides these forecasts to the Australian Energy Regulator to approve the revenue we require to support this investment.
• As solar uptake increases and solar generation becomes more important to the broader energy system, Jemena and other distribution businesses will need to ensure they continue to efficiently and prudently invest in networks. However, distribution businesses like Jemena are experts in asset management with expertise in making appropriate investment decisions based on rigorous due diligence and advice.
• We seek to engage closely with our customers as solar uptake increases to manage our network in line with their views and expectations. Our customers have important input to provide to us, including about the types of investments we can make to best support solar uptake and how to manage the costs of our investments fairly.

• Yes, rooftop solar panels have been around for quite some time, but solar panel penetration is only now getting to the stage where significant excess solar energy is being exported back onto the JEN network, which is starting to cause network management issues such as voltage rises and capacity constraints. These emerging issues tend to be more prevalent and have occurred sooner in other areas, for example in states with greater solar resources such as South Australia and Queensland.
• When solar panels were introduced as something that could be installed on people’s homes, no one knew the extent to which their uptake would accelerate. In 2012, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) released a report suggesting that it expected Australia-wide rooftop solar PV capacity of 5.1 gigawatts (GW) in 2020, and almost 12 GW by 2031. We surpassed 12 GW in 2019 and are currently nearly at 33 GW of rooftop solar capacity. The speed and breadth of the change in the Australian rooftop solar generation market has made it a challenge for regulators and other energy industry participants to adjust to.

• Electricity retailers are responsible for managing the costs of feed-in tariffs credited to solar customers for their solar exports. It is up to retailers to determine how they recover these costs.
• In proposing pricing structures to the Australian Energy Regulator to support our investment in export services to enable solar exports, we take the efficient costs of providing our services to customers into account. We look to engage closely with our customers to understand their views and expectations of cost allocation to inform the development of our pricing proposal.
• While renters typically do not have the same options as homeowners when it comes to investing in solar systems, there are a wide range of different ways that renters can take part in the uptake of solar systems depending on their circumstances. For example, owners may decide to install a solar system to improve the value of their property and allow their renters to use the system to cover their electricity usage and export excess electricity.
• The Victorian Government is introducing reforms to help ensure renters benefit from the energy transition. For example, new embedded networks (which are private electricity networks in apartment buildings and other settings) are required to ensure that electricity consumed at the site by residential customers is met from a mix of on- and off-site renewable sources, such as rooftop solar. To find out more, visit https://engage.vic.gov.au/embedded-networks-review.
• Moreover, we want to hear our people’s panel member views on this question, which will help us to shape what we can do in our part.

• Retailers pay feed in tariffs based on how much they value the electricity at the time it is produced. On average this is equivalent to the 6c/kWh as noted in the question. Right now there are no costs or rebates for distributing electricity over the electricity grid included in the 6c/kWh.
• The price charged for electricity by a retailer includes the full stack of costs including network changes, and how much they pay for electricity from the wholesale market – on average, retail operating costs and compliance with environmental programs. This is equivalent to the 30 c/kWh as noted in the question.
• In Victoria, the Essential Services Commission sets a minimum ‘floor price’ for feed-in tariff rates to help ensure solar customers receive a fair rate reflective of the value of their solar exports. For more information, visit www.esc.vic.gov.au/electricity-and-gas/electricity-and-gas-tariffs-and-benchmarks/minimum-feed-tariff