Our research this year confirms that consumer trust and confidence in the energy system is dropping faster than ever before. It also demonstrates that consumers overriding priority in the energy system is affordability.

Improving transparent communication and engagement from network businesses with customers on their export services provides an excellent avenue to increase both trust and affordability. To improve network transparency and communication outcomes, we encourage the Australian Energy Regulator to:

1. Require networks to report the methodology, data, and calculations used to determine export levels and costs of increasing hosting capacity;
2. Develop metrics that measure the quality of export services based on consumers’ values, expectations, and needs, particularly metrics focused on basic export levels, consumer satisfaction with their system size, and connection times and;
3. Develop metrics to measure distribution networks’ engagement with solar retailers and installers, particularly metrics focused on network communication and compliance with solar system requirements, such as inverter settings.

Read our full submission here