Questions from the Panel

The regulated revenue TasNetworks receives must be spent on building, operating and maintaining the transmission and distribution electricity networks for the benefit of Tasmanian customers. These are activities like replacing poles and overhead lines or repairing them after faults, operating a customer service centre to take customer calls and connecting new customers to the network.

TasNetworks has three sources of revenue:

• Regulated revenue – As the monopoly provider of electricity services in Tasmania, TasNetworks is regulated by the Australian Energy Regulator (AER), who sets the maximum revenue and prices we can recover from customers and the service standards we must deliver. This is where over 90 per cent of TasNetworks revenue comes from.
• Negotiated revenue – for monopoly electricity services TasNetworks provides, where customers want a specific/ /different level of service that is determined through negotiation
• Unregulated revenue – where there is a competitive market to provide this service. TasNetworks is not allowed to offer services in this space directly and is not allowed to use regulated funds to subsidise these activities. 42-24 is TasNetworks’ subsidiary that operates in this space and provides telecommunications services in the competitive market.

TasNetworks must return 90 per cent of any profit we make as dividends to our Shareholders. This means we have limited opportunity to use any profit through additional revenue sources to offset costs.

TasNetworks provides network services to a diverse customer base, including residential, commercial and large industrial users. While the mix of customers differs across regions, all customers pay for network services under a regulated pricing framework approved by the AER.

Network revenue is not determined by TasNetworks on a customer-by-customer basis. Instead, total allowable revenue is set through a regulatory determination, which is based on the efficient costs required to operate, maintain and invest in the network. This revenue is then recovered from customers through network charges and tariff structures designed to allocate costs in a fair and cost-reflective way across different customer groups.

TasNetworks is a Government Business Enterprise, and decisions regarding dividend settings are ultimately a matter for the Tasmanian Government as Shareholder.

Our primary focus as the network operator is to ensure we invest appropriately in maintaining, replacing and upgrading infrastructure to deliver a safe, reliable and efficient power system for customers and communities across Tasmania. These investment decisions are informed by long-term planning, asset condition, risk, and customer needs, and are subject to regulatory oversight through the Australian Energy Regulator.

We work closely with the Tasmanian Government and our regulators to ensure there is an appropriate balance between delivering essential network investment and providing returns to the shareholder. Importantly, prudent and timely investment in the network remains a core priority to support reliability, resilience and the future energy needs of Tasmania.

As a monopoly provider of electricity network services, TasNetworks is not allowed to directly offer services where a competitive market exists, such as owning and installing consumer energy resources such as solar panels and batteries.

We recognise that the energy transition presents both opportunities and challenges for customers, and improving equity is an important focus, particularly for those who may experience vulnerability or other barriers that may prevent access to emerging energy technologies.

We are focused on delivering a fair, safe and reliable energy system for all Tasmanians, with increasing emphasis on:

• supporting customers through the energy transition
• improving access to information and services
• enabling new technologies such as rooftop solar, batteries and electric vehicles
• working with government and industry to ensure no customer group is left behind.

Our role is primarily to enable and support equitable outcomes, rather than directly own or provide customer energy assets. This includes:

• investing in the network to ensure all customers can access reliable electricity, regardless of location
• enabling higher penetration of consumer energy resources (like rooftop solar)
• supporting initiatives such as community energy, trials, and partnerships that improve access for harder-to-reach or vulnerable customers
• exploring non-network solutions and demand management approaches that can reduce costs for customers.

Overall, our focus is on enabling a more inclusive energy system, where all Tasmanians can benefit from the transition, while maintaining fairness, affordability and system reliability.

Encouraging solar uptake for customers where the financial return may be less immediate, requires a coordinated approach across industry and government.

TasNetworks’ role is to ensure the network can safely and reliably support increasing levels of rooftop solar. This includes investing in network capacity, enabling smarter technologies, and supporting fair and efficient connection processes for customers who wish to install solar. In relation to customers being ‘in credit’ from solar, this is managed through their electricity retailer. When a customer exports excess solar energy to the grid, they receive a credit (often via a feed-in tariff) on their electricity bill. That credit is applied by the retailer to offset future electricity usage or carried forward on the customers’ account. It is not held by TasNetworks.

The Office of the Tasmanian Economic Regulator (OTTER) sets the minimum feed-in tariffs that retailers must pay.

TasNetworks’ long-term sustainability is underpinned by a combination of forward planning, targeted investment, and continuous improvement to strengthen the resilience of Tasmania’s electricity network.

Through our planning frameworks, including our Annual Planning Report, we take a 10-year outlook on network needs - assessing demand, asset condition, and emerging risks to ensure the network continues to meet customer and system requirements over time.

TasNetworks operates as both the transmission network service provider and the jurisdictional system operator in Tasmania. In this role, we work closely with all generators, major loads, and interconnectors to maintain a secure, stable and reliable power system.

 We coordinate in real time with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), ensuring Tasmania’s power system operates in sync with the National Electricity Market. This includes managing system conditions, facilitating dispatch, and responding to changing supply and demand.

Our approach is guided by a comprehensive framework of national and jurisdictional rules, technical standards, and operational procedures. We engage with generators through planning processes, connection agreements, and ongoing operational coordination to understand and accommodate their needs, while ensuring overall system security. In practice, this means balancing generator requirements with broader system constraints, using both forward planning and real-time operational decision-making to support efficient and reliable outcomes for all participants.

There are lots of challenges the network faces, and a lot of opportunities for the future. In the People’s Panel Handbook, there are a number of areas where we face challenges we’d like the group to focus on, these include:

Striking the right balance: Investment, reliability outcomes, and customer experience. 

We want to understand what level of reliability you think is reasonable, and how quickly you expect service to improve over time. Regional and rural areas can expect lower reliability, we want to understand what meaningful improvement looks like for these communities.

Striking the right balance: Investment, resilience outcomes, and customer experience.

 We’re seeking direction on how we balance the investment between preparing the network to cope better with extreme weather and restoring power quickly when events do occur or responding to the weather events after they occur. We also want to hear what level of resilience feels reasonable in different parts of the State, including rural and regional areas, and what expectations customers have of their own role in preparedness.

Striking the right balance: Investment, Customer Energy Resource (CER) outcomes, and customer experience.

We’re seeking direction from you on whether we should maintain current CER connection standards or invest further so more people can connect. We also want to understand expectations around fairness between customers who can access CER and those who can’t, and how people think CER should contribute to reliability and resilience in future.

Striking the right balance: investment, digital capabilities and customer experience.

We need to explore with you how quickly should digital technology be adopted and where should investment be focussed?

Different levels of investment can lead to different outcomes, and cost variations and not all customers will value these improvements in the same way. Understanding how you value these improvements will help TasNetworks set the right pace of change and ensure investment is directed where it matters most.