Advanced Search

Share Coverage



Category: Electricity Energy and Utilities / States and Territories / State Parliament / Parliament / Government and Politics

SA Government plans to give energy regulator 'more teeth'

Tuesday, 27 Sep 2016 16:58:36 | Leah MacLennan

Overhead wires on an electricity pole in Adelaide, September 4 2007 (Gary Rivett: ABC News)

Two bills before South Australia's Parliament would give the national energy regulator more teeth, allowing it to monitor and expose anti-competitive behaviour, the Energy Minister says.

The laws were agreed to at the COAG meeting of state energy ministers in July.

If passed, they would give the Australian Energy Regulator the power to monitor and report on whether power companies are abusing their market power, and whether power networks are spending more than necessary to deliver power to consumers.

SA Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said the laws would make the system more transparent.

"There's been a whole series of events from 2007 right up until July this year where we've seen excessive market power operate, but of course getting to the facts and the evidence of that is very, very difficult," he said.

"What we're going to do through this bill in Parliament today is give the independent regulator the teeth they need to go in and investigate and more importantly make public the findings they have of excessive market power."

South Australian power prices have skyrocketed in recent months, with a wide range of factors being blamed.

They include the closure of the Port Augusta power station, the unpredictable supply of renewable energy, an outage to the Heywood interconnector and the high price of gas.

Some people, including Mr Koutsantonis, have blamed power companies, saying they have abused market conditions to engage in price gouging.

A report by the Australian Energy Retailer into the July price spikes largely absolved power companies from abusing market conditions.

AustraliaPlus


 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend