Energy Procurement Glossary

The Australian accounting standard setting out climate-related disclosure requirements, including disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions. Issued by the Australian Accounting Standards Board in September 2024, it applies to annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2025, with entry phased by entity size and emissions under the Corporations Act.

Source: AASB, AASB S2 Climate-related Disclosures

The AER-approved instrument setting the terms on which a gas pipeline service provider sells pipeline services on a scheme pipeline. It must describe all the pipeline services the provider can reasonably provide on the pipeline, specify which of them are reference services, and specify for each reference service the reference tariff and the other terms and conditions on which it will be provided, together with capacity trading, extension and expansion requirements and the dates for its review and revision.

Note: Gas networks are regulated through access arrangements, while electricity distribution networks are regulated through distribution determinations and tariff structure statements. A pipeline that is not a scheme pipeline has no access arrangement.

Source: National Gas Rules, rule 48, current rules; AER, register of access arrangements

In general procurement, a supplier assessed against published criteria by a scheme owner or buyer and admitted to the group permitted to supply. In Australian energy the term has a statutory counterpart in the energy efficiency certificate schemes: an accredited person under the Victorian Energy Upgrades program, accredited by the Essential Services Commission under the Victorian Energy Efficiency Target Act 2007, and an accredited certificate provider under the New South Wales Energy Savings Scheme, accredited by IPART under Schedule 4A of the Electricity Supply Act 1995.

Note: No accreditation regime of this kind applies to energy brokers, consultants or strategists. Accreditation in the certificate schemes permits the creation of certificates, not the arranging of supply contracts.

Source: Essential Services Commission, VEU application guide for accredited persons; IPART, application for accreditation guide for ACPs

A meter that measures only total electricity use between meter readings and does not record the dates and times when the consumption occurred. AEMO's retail market glossary also calls it a basic meter. The matching classification in the Rules is a type 6 metering installation.

Source: AEMO, Retail Electricity Market Procedures - Glossary and Framework

The working electrical energy a site consumes, defined as the time integral of the product of voltage and the in-phase component of current flow across a connection point, expressed in watt hours. Active power is the rate at which it is transferred, measured in watts. This is the quantity billed as kilowatt hours.

Source: National Electricity Rules, Chapter 10 (glossary), definitions of active energy and active power, current rules

A quantity of energy for a billing period taken from a reading of the meter, rather than estimated or substituted.

Source: National Energy Retail Rules, rules 20 and 21, current rules

The ceiling AEMO applies to a region's spot prices and market ancillary service prices during an administered price period. The National Electricity Rules set it at $600 per MWh for each region, and set the administered floor price, which applies to spot prices only, at the negative of that figure.

Current status: The $600 per MWh level replaced $300 per MWh from 1 December 2022, and under an AEMC final rule determination of 7 December 2023 is maintained for the period 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028.

Source: AEMO, Guide to Administered Pricing

A period AEMO declares for a region once the sum of that region's spot prices, or of its prices for a market ancillary service, over the previous 2,016 trading intervals exceeds the cumulative price threshold. During it the administered price cap and administered floor price limit published prices, while dispatch, price determination and PASA otherwise continue under the Rules. It runs to at least 0400 hours and ends only when the seven-day cumulative price, recalculated as if no capping had applied, no longer exceeds the threshold.

Note: It is assessed separately for each region and for each market, energy and ancillary services. Where a regulated interconnector carries power towards a capped region, prices in the exporting region are capped at the importing region's administered price divided by the average inter-regional loss factor, so a region can be collared without having breached the threshold itself.

Source: AEMO, Guide to Administered Pricing

The Australian Energy Market Operator. It operates the National Electricity Market and the gas markets, administers metering and settlement systems, and publishes planning and reliability forecasts.

Source: aemo.com.au

The Australian Energy Regulator. It regulates retail energy markets in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, approves network revenue and tariff structures, and sets the Default Market Offer. It does not regulate retail markets in Victoria, Western Australia or the Northern Territory.

Source: AER, other retail roles

Industry usage

The combined consumption of several sites, used to state a buyer's total volume when it goes to market, or to compare one period with another across a portfolio.

Note: This is not aggregation in the regulatory sense. Aggregation under the National Energy Retail Rules is the act of treating two or more of a business customer's premises as one for the consumption threshold that separates small from large customers, and it requires a written agreement and the customer's explicit informed consent. Adding sites together in a tender document or a report has no effect on that threshold.

Treating two or more of a business customer's premises as one for the purposes of the consumption threshold. It requires a written agreement and the customer's explicit informed consent, and a retailer cannot do it on its own initiative.

Source: National Energy Retail Rules, rule 5

A distribution service that is a direct control service but not a standard control service. The AER classifies distribution services in a distribution determination, and the classification decides the form of control applying to the charge.

Note: The AER's position is that the classification is likely to apply where the cost of a service is directly attributable to an individual customer's connection to the network, and chapter 6 gives the example of a service provided to a small number of identifiable customers on a discretionary or infrequent basis. Connection and metering services are commonly classified this way.

Source: National Electricity Rules, chapter 10 (glossary) and clause 6.2.2, current rules; AER, connection charge guidelines for electricity customers, April 2023

Industry usage

The total volume of gas a buyer is entitled to take, and commonly commits to take, over a contract year under a gas supply agreement. It is usually stated in terajoules or petajoules, and minimum and maximum annual takes are expressed against it.

The document a distribution network service provider submits to the AER each year setting its network tariffs for the coming regulatory year. Chapter 6 of the National Electricity Rules requires it to state the proposed tariffs for each tariff class, the charging parameters for each tariff and what elements of service they relate to, the expected weighted average revenue for each tariff class providing standard control services, the nature of any variation that could occur during the year, and how designated pricing proposal charges are passed on.

Note: The proposal has to be consistent with the network's approved tariff structure statement, which fixes the structures for the whole regulatory control period. A pricing proposal sets price levels inside those structures rather than creating new ones.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clause 6.18.2, current rules

Industry usage

A recurring payment made by an embedded network operator to a site owner or owners corporation under the commercial arrangement.

The combined power flowing at a point, defined as the square root of the sum of the squares of the active power and the reactive power. It is measured in volt-amperes, and at commercial scale in kilovolt-amperes. Power factor is the ratio of active power to apparent power at a metering point.

Source: National Electricity Rules, Chapter 10 (glossary), definitions of apparent power and power factor, current rules

Industry usage

A minimum credit rating the issuer of a guarantee must hold before a retailer will accept that guarantee as security. Agreements state the grade required and usually accept an equivalent rating from another agency of similar standing.

The Australian Standard specifying general purpose natural gas, setting limits on the composition and energy properties gas must meet. The National Gas Rules adopt it, making the specifications it contains the standard gas quality specifications for the Victorian declared wholesale market and for short term trading market hubs, together with anything added by Commonwealth or State legislation or, at a hub, by the applicable access arrangement.

Current status: The Rules cite the 2005 edition and pick up later versions through the words "as amended or replaced from time to time". Standards Australia has published later editions since, and an individual pipeline's gas specification states which edition it reproduces.

Source: National Gas Rules, Part 19, rule 200, and Part 20, rule 364 (standard gas quality specifications), current rules

The Australian and New Zealand standard for energy audits of commercial buildings. It sets minimum requirements for commissioning and conducting three prescribed types of audit, numbered Type 1 to Type 3, and covers all forms of energy used in the building. Parts 2 and 3 of the standard cover industrial and related activities and transport-related activities.

Source: Standards Australia, AS/NZS 3598.1:2014 Energy audits, Part 1: Commercial buildings

The joint Australian and New Zealand standard titled Grid connection of energy systems via inverters, Part 2: Inverter requirements. It sets the device specifications, functionality, testing and compliance requirements for electrical safety and performance of inverters connecting energy sources or energy storage systems to the grid at low voltage, and covers electric vehicles operating in a vehicle-to-grid mode.

Note: The National Electricity Rules define the DER Technical Standards as the requirements for distribution connected units under AS 4777.2:2020 as in force from time to time, so an amendment to the standard takes effect without a change to the Rules. The 2020 edition was published in December 2020 and carries amendments from 2021 and 2024.

Source: Standards Australia, AS/NZS 4777.2:2020; National Electricity Rules, chapter 10 (glossary), definition of DER Technical Standards, current rules

Industry usage

The passing of ownership of embedded network equipment between parties, usually at the end of an agreement and often on payment of a residual value.

A Queensland arrangement under which a designated retailer must make a standing offer to large customers at notified prices, under a large customer standard retail contract. No equivalent exists in the other national framework jurisdictions.

Source: National Energy Retail Law (Queensland), sections 64B to 64K

The exchange market on which Australian electricity, gas and environmental derivatives are listed and traded. Electricity futures are listed for the New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia regions, are cash settled against those regions' reference prices rather than by physical delivery, and are cleared through the exchange's clearing house.

Source: ASX Energy, Australian electricity derivatives

Work to enlarge a transmission or distribution system, or to increase its capacity to transmit or distribute electricity. An extension, being an augmentation that requires connecting a line or facility outside the present boundaries of the network, is treated as a separate case in the connection charge principles.

Source: National Electricity Law, section 2, as applied in Queensland, current Act; National Electricity Rules, chapter 10 (glossary) and clause 5A.E.1, current rules

A tradeable financial product issued to individuals or businesses running eligible projects that reduce or avoid emissions. Each unit represents one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent that would otherwise have been released into the atmosphere, and units are issued under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011 by an entry in the Australian National Registry of Emissions Units.

Source: Clean Energy Regulator, glossary

The national competition and consumer regulator, established under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and operating across all industries rather than energy alone. In energy it enforces competition and consumer law, reports on the east coast gas market under a ministerial direction extended to 2030, holds a standing inquiry into prices, profits and margins in the supply of electricity in the National Electricity Market, and monitors and enforces the Gas Market Code.

Source: ACCC, gas inquiry 2017-30 reports

A Commonwealth power to restrict liquefied natural gas exports when a domestic gas supply shortfall is forecast, described by the administering department as a measure of last resort. It took effect on 1 July 2017 and operates through Division 6 of the Customs (Prohibited Exports) Regulations 1958 together with the Customs (Prohibited Exports) (Operation of the Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism) Guidelines 2023. The Minister for Resources determines whether a shortfall market exists, informed by AEMO, the ACCC, and industry and other government sources.

Current status: The Commonwealth released exposure drafts for a Domestic Gas Reservation Bill 2026 for consultation, which opened on 10 September 2026 and closed on 24 September 2026.

Source: Department of Industry, Science and Resources, domestic gas supply

The rule maker and reviewer for the national energy market, established under the Australian Energy Market Commission Establishment Act 2004 of South Australia and operating since July 2005. It makes and amends the National Electricity Rules, the National Gas Rules and the National Energy Retail Rules, conducts market reviews, and advises energy ministers. Its Reliability Panel reviews the reliability standard and the market price settings and recommends them.

Note: The AEMC makes the rules, the AER enforces them and regulates networks, and AEMO runs the market. The three are separate bodies with separate functions.

Source: AEMC, annual report 2024-25

The two standards the Australian Accounting Standards Board issued in September 2024 to govern sustainability and climate reporting: AASB S1, covering sustainability-related financial information, which entities may elect to apply; and AASB S2, covering climate-related disclosures, which certain entities are required to apply under the Corporations Act 2001.

Current status: AASB S2 is phased in by entity group. Group 1 entities apply it for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2025, Group 2 entities for periods beginning on or after 1 July 2026, and Group 3 entities for periods beginning on or after 1 July 2027.

Source: AASB, An Overview of Australian Sustainability Reporting Standards

Industry usage

The electricity a retailer supplies in the periods when the contracted generator is not producing enough to cover a site's consumption. It is priced separately from the contracted renewable quantity.

Source: NSW Government, NSW Guide to Corporate Power Purchase Agreements

Industry usage

An undertaking by a financial institution to pay a stated amount to the retailer on demand, given in place of cash security. The institution pays first and recovers from the buyer under its own facility terms.

Note: The demand runs against the issuing institution rather than against the buyer, so a call on the guarantee does not require the retailer to establish a breach by the buyer first.

Industry usage

Whether a project's expected revenue is certain enough, and runs for long enough, for lenders to finance it on terms the developer can accept. In energy procurement it usually describes whether a contracted offtake is firm enough and long enough to support debt on new generation or storage.

A NABERS rating assessing the energy consumed in supplying a building's central services to office net lettable area and common spaces. Lifts, common area lighting and central heating and cooling sit inside its scope, and energy consumed within a tenancy sits outside it.

Source: NABERS, The Rules: Energy and Water for Offices, Table 1.1.3

Two ideas combined. A base contract covers every trading interval in the period, which the exchange defines as midnight Monday to midnight Sunday. A strip is four consecutive quarters traded as one line, over a calendar or financial year.

Source: AER, State of the energy market, on futures products; ASX, Australian electricity derivatives fact sheet

A connection service for a retail customer's premises where the customer is typical of a significant class of customers who have sought or are likely to seek the service, or is a micro resource operator, where the service involves minimal or no augmentation of the distribution network, and where the AER has approved a model standing offer for providing it on that basis.

Note: A connection service does not include providing, installing or maintaining a metering installation for the premises, so metering at a new connection is arranged separately from the connection itself.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clauses 5A.A.1, 5A.E.1 and 5A.F.1, current rules

A meter that records cumulative totals only, so consumption is known for the period between reads and not within it. In electricity it is AEMO's alternate name for an accumulation meter. In gas it is a metering installation with no data logger, whose index is read at the start and at the end of each measurement period.

Note: The gas sense turns on the absence of a data logger rather than on the register type. In the Victorian retail gas market it is also the class of site for which the distribution business, rather than AEMO, converts measured volume into energy.

Source: AEMO, Retail Electricity Market Procedures - Glossary and Framework; AEMO, Wholesale Market Metering Procedures (Victoria), chapter 3

Industry usage

A system of battery cells, inverters and control equipment that charges from a supply and discharges electricity later. Systems range from a cabinet behind a single customer's meter to grid-scale installations connected at transmission voltage.

Note: In the national electricity market the registration category is different from the commercial label. Following the Australian Energy Market Commission's 2021 rule on integrating energy storage, grid-connected storage is registered as a bidirectional unit operated by an Integrated Resource Provider.

Source: AEMC, Integrating energy storage systems into the National Electricity Market, final determination, 2 December 2021

Industry usage

Generation, storage or consumption on the customer's side of the connection point, so the energy does not pass through the revenue meter as a grid import. Solar output consumed on site, and battery charging and discharging within the premises, are behind the meter.

Industry usage

Comparing a site's or a portfolio's energy performance against a reference point: the same site in an earlier period, comparable sites, or a published rating or index. In procurement the word is also used for comparing a contract price against the market at a point in time, which is a different exercise using the same name.

Note: In the Australian energy audit standard, benchmarking is a step within data analysis rather than a standalone piece of work.

Source: Standards Australia, AS/NZS 3598.1:2014 Energy audits, Part 1: Commercial buildings

The point at which a discount, credit or other benefit under a market retail contract ends or changes. For small customers the retailer must give written notice between 40 and 20 business days beforehand, and after that date cannot charge more than its standing offer prices.

Source: National Energy Retail Rules, rules 48A and 48C

A stage in a multi-stage procurement in which shortlisted suppliers are invited to submit a final offer after clarification or negotiation. Victorian government guidance describes it as a process to obtain the best result from shortlisted suppliers against the procurement requirements, with the final offer not subject to further negotiation.

Source: Victorian Government, glossary of goods and services procurement terms

Industry usage

Checking an energy invoice against the contract, the metering data and the applicable network tariff to confirm the charges are correct.

This is settled industry usage rather than a defined term.

Industry usage

A consolidated record of a buyer's energy invoices across sites and billing periods, holding the account and supply point identifiers, the period, consumption, charges by component and the amount payable. It is the basis for bill validation and for comparing invoiced rates against contracted rates.

A high-methane content gas produced by biogas upgrading and suitable for use as a natural gas substitute. Biogas upgrading is the refining of biogas and the stripping of its impurities, which may include pre-treatment, drying or scrubbing, and post-treatment processing or compression.

Source: National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Regulations 2008, section 1.03, current regulations

Industry usage

Renegotiating an existing contract by blending its remaining rate with a new rate and extending the term.

Industry usage

A commission paid to an intermediary for arranging a supply contract. It is commonly expressed as an amount per unit of energy, such as dollars per megawatt hour or cents per kilowatt hour, and recovered through a margin on the energy rate, so the retailer pays it out of the contract and recovers it in the rate the buyer pays. Fixed amounts per site or per contract are also used.

Note: A fee recovered through the rate forms part of the rate rather than appearing as a separate invoice line.

Source: The Energy Charter, National Customer Code for Energy Brokers, Consultants and Retailers

Industry usage

An existing building where the embedded network is already operating, usually with an incumbent operator and an existing agreement to review.

Industry usage

A development built to be held and leased by a single owner rather than sold lot by lot. The ownership structure changes who contracts for energy at the site.

Industry usage

A development built for sale of individual lots, after which common property passes to an owners corporation.

The certificate that discloses energy efficiency information about office space under the Commercial Building Disclosure programme. It combines a NABERS Energy for Offices rating for the building with a Tenancy Lighting Assessment, is valid for up to 12 months, and is published on the Building Energy Efficiency Register.

Note: The two components have different lives. The NABERS rating is valid for up to 12 months and the Tenancy Lighting Assessment for five years, and the certificate lapses when the earlier of the two expires.

Source: DCCEEW, Building Energy Efficiency Certificate

Industry usage

A contract structure in which network charges and other costs are combined with the energy rate into a single price.

There is no regulated definition, and the choice to bundle sits with the retailer.

Industry usage

Two or more buyers who combine their requirements and approach the market together, so that one negotiation covers all of them. Where the members compete with each other, negotiating collectively engages the competition provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act, and the ACCC's class exemption, notification and authorisation processes are the routes to legal protection for it.

Industry usage

The process of reversing an invoice that has already been issued and issuing a replacement covering the same period. It is normally triggered when the metering data behind the original invoice changes, for example when an estimated or substituted read is replaced by an actual read, or when a rate, loss factor or network tariff applied to the account is corrected.

Note: The term names the billing process, not its outcome. A cancel and rebill can produce a credit or a further amount owing.

Source: National Energy Retail Rules, rules 30 and 31, current rules

Industry usage

A contract that limits the price paid for electricity above a set level, so the buyer is protected from prices beyond it. Exchange-traded caps in the national market have a strike price of $300 per megawatt hour.

Note: This strike price is a feature of the traded contract and is unrelated to the administered price cap, which is a regulatory ceiling AEMO applies during an administered price period. The two are different mechanisms that have at times carried the same figure.

Source: AER, State of the energy market, on contract products

AEMO's daily auction of transportation capacity on the pipelines and compression facilities subject to it, held for use on the following gas day. Only capacity that has been contracted but not nominated by the nomination cut-off time is offered. The auction runs as a single sealed-bid round with a reserve price of zero, clears on a pay as cleared basis, and sells forward haul, backhaul and compression services.

Note: Part 25 does not apply in Western Australia until an order under section 7A of the National Gas Access (WA) Act 2009 is published in the Western Australian Government Gazette.

Source: National Gas Rules, Part 25, rules 645 to 652, current rules

The unit in which Western Australia's Reserve Capacity Mechanism measures and pays for capacity. Under the Electricity System and Market Rules a Capacity Credit is a Peak Capacity Credit or a Flexible Capacity Credit, each equivalent to one megawatt of the relevant capacity provided by a facility during a Capacity Year, and each held by the Market Participant registered for that facility.

Source: Electricity System and Market Rules (WA), chapter 11 glossary, current rules

Industry usage

A generating plant's actual output over a period as a share of what it would have produced running at its registered capacity for the whole of that period.

Note: The AER publishes an available capacity factor, which compares a generator's availability to its registered capacity. That measures what the plant was able to offer rather than what it produced, so the two figures are not interchangeable.

Source: AER, Wholesale electricity market performance report 2026

A Commonwealth revenue underwriting scheme that runs competitive tenders for agreements supporting new renewable generation and clean dispatchable capacity such as battery storage. It targets an additional 40 GW of capacity by 2030, made up of 26 GW of generation and 14 GW of dispatchable capacity, following an uplift from 32 GW announced on 29 July 2025. AEMO and the scheme's tender delivery partner administer the tender process.

Current status: The expanded scheme is being rolled out from 2024 to 2027, with tender rounds published on an indicative timetable by market and technology. Tenders are held in the National Electricity Market and in Western Australia's Wholesale Electricity Market until 2027.

Source: Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Capacity Investment Scheme

A payment a connecting customer makes towards the cost of work a network must do to provide a connection service, including a prepayment or a financial guarantee. The connection charge principles allow a reasonable contribution towards an extension of the network, towards augmentation of premises connection assets at the connection point, and towards wider augmentation of the distribution system for a standard connection service or under a negotiated connection contract, and only where provision for the cost has not already been made through distribution use of system charges or the tariff applying to the connection.

Note: Each network's connection policy must set a shared network augmentation charge threshold below which a retail customer cannot be required to contribute towards augmentation beyond an extension. The AER requires that threshold to be based on a measure of demand and fixed for the regulatory control period, and allows a network to set a different threshold in each identifiably different area of its network. Where a connection asset stops being dedicated to the customer's exclusive use within 7 years of its construction and the customer is entitled to a refund under the connection charge guidelines, the network must make the refund and may recover it from the new users of the asset.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clause 5A.E.1, current rules; AER, connection charge guidelines for electricity customers, April 2023

A small customer who continues consuming energy at premises after their contract expires without new terms being agreed and without applying to a retailer.

Source: National Energy Retail Law, section 2

Industry usage

A shared hot water service in a building, where water is heated centrally and supplied to individual lots. It is commonly metered and billed to occupants alongside electricity in an embedded network.

Industry usage

A defined event allowing a supplier to adjust charges, or introduce a new charge, to recover costs arising from a legal change after the contract starts. Definitions commonly reach the introduction, amendment or repeal of any law, regulation, rule or code, and any new or increased tax, fee or charge affecting the supplier's cost of buying or selling the energy.

A connection point within an embedded network, serving an individual lot or tenancy, which can be registered in the market so the occupant can take supply from a retailer of their choice.

Source: AEMO MSATS procedures; AER embedded network material

Industry usage

A meter within an embedded network that records consumption for an individual lot, tenancy, common area or service.

Note: The rules define the parent and child connection point rather than the meter, so the meter terms are market usage built on the defined connection points.

The Commonwealth statutory authority that administers Australia's carbon and renewable energy schemes, established under the Clean Energy Regulator Act 2011 and operating since 2 April 2012. Its schemes include the Renewable Energy Target, made up of the large-scale target and the small-scale scheme, the Australian Carbon Credit Unit scheme, the Safeguard Mechanism, National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting, the Guarantee of Origin scheme and the Nature Repair Market.

Note: It has no role in energy prices, retailer conduct or network regulation. Its schemes sit behind the environmental component of an energy price rather than the price itself.

Source: Clean Energy Regulator, about us

An Australian Government programme that certified businesses and organisations against the Climate Active Carbon Neutral Standards and licensed them to use the Climate Active trade mark.

Note: The programme is being wound down. The government announced in July 2026 that it will end certification of voluntary climate claims, with certification proposed to cease on 30 June 2027 and the trade marks and the official carbon neutral term for voluntary claims discontinued.

Source: Climate Active, Climate Active certification ending, have your say

Carbon dioxide equivalence. Under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act it is the amount of a greenhouse gas multiplied by a value specified in the regulations for that kind of gas, which places gases of differing warming effect on a single scale.

Source: National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007, section 7, current Act

Industry usage

A contract combining a cap and a floor, so the price paid moves within a band.

An ACCC class exemption that allows eligible businesses to negotiate collectively with a common supplier or customer without breaching the cartel and anti-competitive conduct provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act. A corporation is eligible for a financial year if it reasonably believes its aggregated turnover in the previous financial year was less than $10 million. Franchisees negotiating with their franchisor, and fuel retailers negotiating with their fuel wholesaler, are eligible regardless of turnover.

The mechanism is a notice. The group gives a notice in the approved form to the ACCC, and a copy to the target business before negotiating, making or giving effect to the contract. Conduct is covered from the notice date, or from no more than 14 days before it. The exemption does not cover a provision whose purpose is to restrict supply to or acquisition from the target, that is, a collective boycott.

Source: ACCC, Competition and Consumer (Class Exemption-Collective Bargaining) Determination 2020, sections 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10

A national regulatory programme requiring energy efficiency information to be provided in most cases when commercial office space of 1,000 square metres or more is offered for sale, lease or sublease. It is administered by DCCEEW under the Building Energy Efficiency Disclosure Act 2010.

Source: DCCEEW, legal framework

Industry usage

A description of an arrangement in which the intermediary is paid a fee by the buyer and takes no commission from the retailer, so the fee is invoiced to the buyer rather than recovered through the energy rate.

Note: This is a market claim, not a regulated or defined term. What it covers in a particular engagement depends on that engagement's terms.

A written disclosure of any actual, potential or perceived conflict of interest, made by a person taking part in a procurement. A conflict of interest arises where an official, an adviser or a supplier has an affiliation or interest that might prejudice, or be seen to prejudice, their impartiality. Commonwealth guidance says the declaration should be made before the person takes part in the process, and that the obligation to disclose conflicts arising later runs until the process is complete.

Source: Department of Finance, ethics and probity in procurement; Victorian Government, glossary of goods and services procurement terms, under conflict of interest form

Industry usage

A distribution network's agreement to a new or altered connection at a site, on conditions it sets. Under chapter 5A of the Rules the sequence for a retail customer is a connection application, then a connection offer from the network, then a connection contract formed by acceptance of that offer.

Note: "approval" is not a defined term in the Rules. Networks use it both for that decision and for the separate approval of inverter or generation capacity at an existing connection. Which process applies, what information is required and what conditions attach are set in the relevant network's AER-approved connection policy.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clauses 5A.A.1 and 5A.D.3, current rules

The contract formed by the making and acceptance of a connection offer, between the distribution network service provider and the retail customer or real estate developer.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clause 5A.A.1, current rules

An offer by a distribution network service provider to enter into a connection contract with a retail customer or a real estate developer. It must be accompanied by a schedule itemising connection costs, including the applicable connection charges, the cost of any network extension, details and cost of upstream augmentation required to provide the service, and any other incidental costs with the basis of their calculation.

Note: The timing differs by category. For a basic or standard connection service the network must make the offer within 10 business days of a properly completed application, in accordance with the approved model standing offer. For a negotiated connection contract it must use best endeavours to make the offer within 65 business days of the application, and that offer lapses 20 business days after its date unless the parties agree to extend the period for acceptance.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clauses 5A.A.1, 5A.E.2, 5A.F.1 and 5A.F.4, current rules

The point at which a customer's electrical installation connects to the distribution or transmission network. Financial responsibility for energy taken at a connection point sits with one market participant, usually the retailer, and each connection point carries its own identifier.

Source: AEMO, MSATS technical guide

Industry usage

Loss that does not arise naturally, or in the usual course of things, from a breach of contract. Australian supply agreements exclude it mutually, and commonly do so under drafted labels such as indirect loss and economic loss rather than under the phrase itself.

Note: The phrase has no fixed content in Australian law, so what is excluded is read from the contract's own definition. Where that definition names business interruption losses, loss of profits and data corruption, the exclusion removes the buyer's own lost production and profit as well as the supplier's.

The mathematical representation AEMO uses to manage power system limitations and frequency control ancillary service requirements in the dispatch engine. A physical restriction, such as how much a transmission element can carry under given conditions, is translated into a linear equation the dispatch solver must satisfy, which turns it into a restriction on what can be dispatched. AEMO formulates them under the Constraint Formulation Guidelines, made under clause 3.8.10(c) of the National Electricity Rules.

Source: AEMO, Constraint Formulation Guidelines

The consumer data portability regime established under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and applied to energy by the Consumer Data Right (Energy Sector) Designation 2020. In energy it lets a consumer require a retailer to share nominated data with an accredited data recipient. Product data sharing commenced on 1 October 2022 and consumer data sharing on 15 November 2022 for the retailers named as initial retailers in the CDR Rules, with later dates for larger retailers.

Note: Retailers are primary data holders, holding customer, account, billing and tailored tariff data. AEMO is a secondary data holder with no direct customer relationship, holding metering data, National Metering Identifier standing data and distributed energy resources register data. The regime covers the National Electricity Market, and data holder obligations apply only to authorised or licensed retailers operating in it.

Source: Australian Government, CDR in the energy sector

Small-scale energy resources owned by customers that can produce, store or vary how energy is used. The AEMC's examples are rooftop solar, batteries and electric vehicles, alongside older assets such as hot water heaters and pool pumps.

Note: Consumer energy resources has taken over most of the work that distributed energy resources used to do, and it is the term in AEMO's CER Data Exchange programme and in the Energy Ministers' national consumer energy resources roadmap. The two are not exact synonyms. The AEMC uses consumer energy resources for the customer-owned subset and distributed energy resources for the broader category, which also takes in assets such as neighbourhood batteries.

Source: AEMC, Unlocking the full potential of consumer energy resources

Industry usage

Whether a customer is allowed to choose their electricity or gas retailer. It is a function of jurisdiction and consumption rather than a single national rule.

Note: In the National Electricity Market jurisdictions every customer is contestable, which is why those markets are described as having full retail contestability. In the South West Interconnected System in Western Australia, a customer consuming not more than 50 MWh a year at a supply point is a prescribed customer and is non-contestable, so it can be supplied only by the state-owned retailer. In the Northern Territory, retail choice is confined to larger customers under the Territory's own arrangements.

Source: Energy Policy WA, information paper on the SWIS prescribed customers order 2023

Industry usage

The recurring yearly date on which a supply contract took effect. Contracts use it to time rate steps, review points and notice periods.

Note: It is not the contract end date, and it need not align with the billing cycle or the financial year.

A cash-settled contract on a fixed price for a stated quantity over a stated period. Where the spot price is above the fixed price, the seller pays the buyer the difference; where it is below, the buyer pays the seller. In over-the-counter markets, electricity futures go by the names swaps and contracts for difference.

Source: AER, State of the energy market 2021, chapter 2

The calendar quarter an exchange-traded electricity contract covers. Contract months are March, June, September and December, and because a quarter runs to 90, 91 or 92 days, a base load contract unit of one megawatt covers 2,160, 2,184 or 2,208 megawatt hours depending on which quarter it is.

Source: ASX, Australian electricity derivatives fact sheet

Industry usage

A record of a buyer's supply agreements, holding for each one the counterparty, start and end dates, the contracted rates and charges, the sites covered, and the dates on which notice must be given or a review falls due.

Note: In government procurement the same phrase names a published register of awarded contracts kept to meet a disclosure obligation, which is a different document from a buyer's internal record.

Industry usage

The volume of energy a buyer commits to take under a supply agreement.

Under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act, a constitutional corporation that does not have a holding company incorporated in Australia. A controlling corporation's group consists of the corporation and its subsidiaries, and may consist of the corporation alone.

Source: National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007, sections 7 and 8, current Act

The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting threshold measured across the whole of a controlling corporation's group: 50 kilotonnes of CO2-e emitted, 200 terajoules of energy produced, or 200 terajoules of energy consumed, in a financial year.

Source: National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007, section 13(1)(a) to (c), current Act

Industry usage

Dividing an energy cost across sites, departments, tenants or cost centres, normally from metering data and normally where one supply or one account serves more than one user.

A contingency event whose occurrence AEMO considers reasonably possible in the surrounding circumstances, including the technical envelope. The Rules give as likely examples the unexpected disconnection or unplanned capacity reduction of one operating generating or bidirectional unit, and the unexpected disconnection of one major item of transmission plant other than through a three phase fault. Events outside that set, such as three phase faults or simultaneous multiple failures, are non-credible contingency events.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clause 4.2.3, current rules

Industry usage

A retailer's review of a buyer's financial standing and payment record. In large customer supply agreements it is commonly a continuing right rather than a single step at signing, with the buyer undertaking to provide the information needed for it throughout the term.

Note: For small customers the Retail Rules deal with the related question of credit history, requiring a retailer to ask the customer for permission to run a credit check and to consider the result before requiring a security deposit. Those requirements do not reach large customer agreements, where the scope and timing of assessment are set by the contract.

Source: National Energy Retail Rules, rule 39, current rules

Industry usage

The umbrella term for any instrument standing behind a buyer's payment obligations, covering cash security, bank guarantees and parent company guarantees. Agreements use it to describe the obligation at a level above whichever instrument is chosen.

The dollar figure that, once exceeded by the sum of a region's prices over the previous 2,016 trading intervals, equivalent to seven days, triggers an administered price period in that region. The AEMC calculates it by 28 February each year from a base value set in the Rules, indexed to the Australian consumer price index, and publishes it in a schedule of reliability settings to apply from 1 July. For the 2026-27 financial year it is $2,225,900 per MWh, equivalent to an average spot price of $1,104.12 per MWh across the seven days.

Current status: From 1 November 2028 the calculation changes under an AEMC final rule made on 23 April 2026. AEMO will use prices received rather than dispatch prices to work out when the threshold is reached, and trading intervals priced from the market suspension pricing schedule will be excluded from the cumulative price.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clause 3.14.1, current rules

Metering in which instrument transformers present the meter with a scaled-down version of the current flowing to the load, so the meter measures a fixed proportion of what the site draws rather than the whole of it. At high voltage, voltage transformers scale the voltage in the same way. The National Electricity Rules count current and voltage transformers as part of the metering installation, and AEMO's metrology procedure sets the standards they must meet and treats instrument transformer connected metering as a category distinct from whole current metering.

Source: National Electricity Rules, chapter 7 and schedule 7.4, current rules; AEMO, Metrology Procedure Part A, section 3.1

Industry usage

Output or export being limited below what a plant or site could otherwise have produced or sent to the network. The limit may come from a network constraint, a dispatch instruction, a market price outcome, or a cap written into a connection agreement.

Note: The Rules do not define the word, and it is used for both generation being constrained and a site's exports being reduced. The solar-specific sense is a separate entry in this glossary.

The reduction of a solar system's output or export below what it could otherwise produce. For a customer system this happens through a fixed export limit set at connection, a flexible export limit signalled by the distributor to the inverter, or an inverter reducing output in response to local voltage.

Note: The word also describes a wholesale generator reducing output, which is a different mechanism with different causes. See Curtailment.

Source: AER, Export limits guidance note

The term used in the National Electricity Rules for a person authorised by a customer to act on their behalf in dealings about metering data and connection information. It is the statutory concept that a letter of authority gives effect to.

Source: AEMC, National Electricity Rules, clause 7.15.5, current rules

The defining term in the Retail Law for a contract between a small customer and a retailer. Because the definition is limited to small customers, the protections attaching to it do not reach large customers.

Source: National Energy Retail Law, section 2

Network assets paid for by the connecting customer rather than recovered from all customers through network tariffs. Under the connection charge principles a retail customer may be asked for a reasonable capital contribution towards an extension of the network, or towards augmentation of premises connection assets at their connection point. A customer cannot be required to contribute towards wider augmentation where the application is for a basic connection service or where the threshold in the network's connection policy is not exceeded.

Note: What a customer funds, the threshold above which a contribution applies, and whether any later refund is available if the asset comes to serve other premises, are set in each network's AER-approved connection policy. Energex, for example, runs a pioneer scheme giving a partial refund where an extension funded by one customer is used to connect other premises within seven years.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clause 5A.E.1; Energex, connection policy 2025-30

Industry usage

The baseline volume of gas a buyer may nominate on any one day under a gas supply agreement, usually stated in gigajoules or terajoules. Permitted variation above and below it is set separately, as swing.

Industry usage

A fixed amount payable for each day premises are connected and supplied, charged independently of how much energy is consumed. On electricity invoices it is normally expressed in cents per day.

Note: The same line appears as "supply charge", "service to property charge", "fixed charge" and "standing charge" depending on the retailer and the jurisdiction. The labels are not standardised.

A two-character identifier used with a National Metering Identifier to name one datastream at a connection point. Appended to the ten-character NMI it forms a twelve-character identifier in which the first ten characters are the connection point and the last two the datastream. The first character identifies the measured quantity and the direction of flow, and the second distinguishes meters or measuring elements where more than one records the same quantity.

Note: Whether a datastream carries interval or accumulated data is readable from the first character. An alphabetic first character identifies interval metering data, and a numeric one accumulated data from a type 6 metering installation.

Source: AEMO, MSATS Procedures: National Metering Identifier, section 6

The Victorian high-pressure gas transmission network that AEMO operates as a single market carriage system. The Victorian Transmission System is declared to be the declared transmission system under section 39(1)(b) of the National Gas (Victoria) Act 2008, and AEMO notes that the two names are often used interchangeably.

Source: National Gas (Victoria) Act 2008, section 39(1)(b); AEMO, guide to understanding the scope of the DWGM and Victorian retail market

The wholesale gas market AEMO operates across Victoria's declared transmission system and certain declared distribution systems. Gas is scheduled and priced five times each gas day, at 6 am, 10 am, 2 pm, 6 pm and 10 pm, and each pricing schedule sets an ex ante market price by stacking participants' injection and withdrawal bids against AEMO's demand forecast.

Note: It is a market carriage system operating as a single virtual hub, so participants do not reserve pipeline capacity across the transmission system. The cumulative price is the marginal clearing price accumulated over the preceding 35 scheduling intervals, which is one week; if it reaches the cumulative price threshold, an administered price period begins and the price cannot exceed $40 a gigajoule. Trades in this market, like those in the short term trading markets, sit outside the Gas Market Code's reasonable price provisions.

Source: AER, Victorian gas market cumulative price; National Gas Rules, Part 19, current rules

The arrangement that applies when a small customer keeps taking supply at premises without a contract, for example after moving in or after a contract ends. It is a statutory safety net, and it applies to small customers only.

Source: National Energy Retail Law, section 54

An exemption that applies automatically to a seller meeting the stated criteria, with no registration required.

Source: AER, retail exempt selling guideline

The forward period over which small-scale technology certificates are created for a system, described by the Clean Energy Regulator as an estimate of how many years a system will generate renewable energy. It decreases by one year for each later installation year until the scheme ends in 2030, so a system installed in 2026 has five years and one installed in 2030 has one.

Note: The regulator's glossary frames the deeming period as the estimated amount of electricity a system generates or displaces, while the entitlement calculation applies it as a number of years. The number of years is the operative figure.

Source: Clean Energy Regulator, calculate small-scale technology certificate entitlements

A price cap set annually by the Australian Energy Regulator for standing offers to residential and small business customers in New South Wales, south-east Queensland and South Australia. It is also the reference price against which market offers are compared. Small business for this purpose means consumption below 100 MWh a year.

Source: AER, Default market offer prices 2026-27, final determination, May 2026

The point on a pipeline at which gas is withdrawn and handed to the party taking it. The Rules define a receipt or delivery point as a point on a pipeline at which a service provider takes delivery of covered gas or delivers it, and a delivery point as that point when used for withdrawal.

Source: National Gas Rules, rule 3 (receipt or delivery point) and rule 141 (delivery point), current rules

A network charge based on the rate at which electricity is drawn at a site, rather than total consumption. There is no national definition: each distributor sets the measurement interval, the unit, the time window, the look-back period and any minimum chargeable level in its own tariff structure statement.

Source: Distributor tariff structure statements approved by the AER. Examples: Ausgrid charges on the highest half-hourly kVA in a defined weekday evening window over the previous twelve months; CitiPower charges on a fifteen-minute kVA maximum across a daytime window with a minimum chargeable demand.

A gas delivery point priced on hourly demand rather than on the volume of gas delivered, because the quantity delivered there has passed the threshold set in the relevant network's access arrangement.

Note: Each access arrangement sets its own threshold. On the Australian Gas Networks Victoria and Albury networks a delivery point is a Demand DP if the quantity of gas delivered has exceeded 10 TJ in the preceding 12 months, or 10 GJ in any hour during the preceding 12 months. That network classifies and reclassifies delivery points, taking into account expected demand and connection characteristics and the reference tariffs assigned to delivery points with the same or materially similar characteristics.

Source: Australian Gas Networks, Victoria and Albury access arrangement 2023-28.pdf)

The network setting a site's chargeable demand to a figure lower than its recorded maximum would otherwise produce, so an earlier peak stops driving the charge. On tariffs that charge on a rolling maximum, a reset is generally granted only on application and on evidence of a permanent change at the site.

Note: Both the grounds and the effect vary by network. On the CitiPower and Powercor networks a 12-month rolling demand reset may be granted where power factor correction equipment has been installed and a certificate of electrical safety supplied, with demand then measured from commissioning, or where the customer evidences another permanent change to the load. The applicable rule is the one in the relevant network's tariff schedule or pricing documents.

Source: CitiPower and Powercor, large business tariffs fact sheet

A change in a consumer's electricity consumption, relative to what would otherwise have been consumed, made in response to a price signal or an instruction. Under the wholesale demand response mechanism in the Rules, a demand response service provider may offer a consumer's reduction into the spot market and be settled at the spot price for it.

Note: The term also covers arrangements made directly between a retailer and a customer, outside the market mechanism, where the reduction is settled under the supply contract instead.

Source: National Electricity Rules, current rules

A person who has classified a connection point as a wholesale demand response unit, or connected plant as an ancillary service unit, or both, and who is registered by AEMO as a Demand Response Service Provider. The person does not need to be the Market Customer for the connection point.

Note: Registration requires satisfying the requirements for registration as a Market Participant and obtaining AEMO's approval for the classification. The provider's activities extend only to the units it has classified, and only while its registration holds.

Source: National Electricity Rules, chapter 10 (glossary) and clauses 2.1A.4, 2.1B.5 and 2.3.6, current rules

Industry usage

A network or retail tariff that includes a charge based on the rate at which electricity is drawn at a site, in addition to or instead of a charge on total consumption.

Industry usage

A contract under which an end-use customer appoints its own metering coordinator rather than accepting the one appointed by its retailer. One provider commonly holds the metering coordinator, metering provider and metering data provider roles under the same agreement.

Note: The phrase is market shorthand and appears nowhere in the Rules. The right it rests on does: at a connection point other than one connecting a generating system to a distribution network, a metering coordinator may be appointed either by the financially responsible Market Participant or by the large customer whose premises are supplied at that connection point.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clause 7.6.2(a)(3), current rules

An instruction from AEMO requiring a registered participant to act outside normal market dispatch, available where AEMO is satisfied it is necessary to maintain or re-establish the power system to a secure, satisfactory or reliable operating state. Where the instruction relates to a scheduled resource, an ancillary service unit or a market generating or bidirectional unit it is a direction; other instructions under the same power are clause 4.8.9 instructions. Issuing one triggers intervention pricing, under which AEMO settles the market at the prices that would have applied had the direction not occurred.

Source: AEMO, Guide to Intervention Pricing

The five-minute period for which AEMO runs central dispatch in the National Electricity Market, issuing dispatch instructions to scheduled plant and determining a dispatch price for each region. Dispatch has run on a five-minute cycle since the market began in 1998.

Note: Since five-minute settlement took effect, the dispatch interval and the trading interval are the same five minutes. Before that, six dispatch intervals sat inside one 30-minute trading interval.

Source: National Electricity Rules, chapter 10 glossary, current rules

Industry usage

The clause setting the steps parties must take before either can litigate, typically written notice with full particulars, a negotiation period, escalation to senior management and a meeting within a stated number of business days. Urgent injunctive or declaratory relief is usually carved out of the requirement.

Consumer-owned devices that, as individual units, can generate or store electricity or actively manage energy demand. Rooftop solar, batteries, hot water systems, smart appliances and electric vehicles are the common examples.

Source: AEMO, about the DER Program

A factor representing the average energy losses incurred in transporting electricity across a distribution network between a distribution connection point and the transmission connection point or virtual transmission node to which that point is assigned, for a given financial year. AEMO applies it to metered energy at a connection point, alongside the transmission loss factor, to derive the adjusted energy amount used in settlement.

Note: A distribution network service provider determines the factors for its own network under a methodology the AER has approved, then provides them to AEMO for publication before the financial year starts. The Rules allow either a site-specific factor or one derived from a volume-weighted average of losses across a class of connection points assigned to the same node.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clause 3.6.3, current rules; AEMO, loss factors and regional boundaries

A person who engages in the activity of owning, controlling or operating a distribution system, being the network and connection assets between the transmission system and customer connection points.

Source: National Electricity Rules, chapter 10 (glossary), current rules

Distribution use of system charges, the component of network charges covering the cost of standard control distribution services, together with revenue adjustments and any pass-through amounts the regulator has approved.

Some distributors publish the same acronym as "distribution use of service".

Source: AER, tariff structure statement decision

A charge payable when a customer ends a fixed term contract before its end date. For small customers the Retail Rules require the amount or its calculation method to be stated in the contract and to be a reasonable estimate of the retailer's costs, and those costs cannot include lost profit. No equivalent restriction applies to large customer contracts.

Source: AEMC, National Energy Retail Rules, rule 49A, current rules

Western Australia's independent economic regulator, established under the Economic Regulation Authority Act 2003 and operating since 1 January 2004. It licenses electricity, gas and water providers, regulates access to the state's electricity networks and gas pipelines, administers the Western Australian electricity and gas codes of conduct, and monitors the Wholesale Electricity Market, including market price limits.

Note: The National Energy Customer Framework does not apply in Western Australia. Retail conduct there is governed by state codes the ERA administers, not by the National Energy Retail Law and Rules, and the AER has no retail role in the state.

Source: Economic Regulation Authority, about us

AEMO's annual ten-year outlook for electricity supply and demand in the National Electricity Market, published under clause 3.13.3A of the National Electricity Rules. It forecasts expected unserved energy against the reliability standard and indicates when new generation capacity or network augmentation would be needed.

Note: AEMO publishes a separate statement of opportunities for the Wholesale Electricity Market in the South West Interconnected System, under the Western Australian rules rather than the National Electricity Rules.

Source: AEMO, ESOO and reliability forecast methodology

An over-the-counter contract exchanging the floating spot price for a fixed price over a defined period and quantity. Each contract relates to a nominated time of day in a particular region. The exchange-traded equivalent is a futures contract.

Source: AER, State of the energy market 2021, chapter 2

A generating unit connected within a distribution system and without direct access to a transmission system. On-site solar, cogeneration and standby generation connected to a distribution network sit in this category.

Note: The National Electricity Rules do not use the term, dealing with the equipment instead through categories such as distribution connected units and micro resource operators. The definition above is the one in TasNetworks' AER-published network tariff application guide.

Source: TasNetworks, network tariff application guide 2024-2029

A private electricity network within a single site, such as an apartment building, shopping centre or business park, which takes supply through one connection to the distribution network and distributes it to occupants through internal meters. The operator buys energy in bulk and sells it to occupants, which requires either a retailer authorisation or an exemption.

Source: AER, retail exempt selling guideline

The accredited party responsible for the market-facing functions of an embedded network, including registering child connection points so occupants can choose their own retailer.

Source: AEMO accreditation framework; AER embedded network material

Industry usage

The party that operates the private network and buys energy in bulk for sale to occupants. The role is commercial rather than defined in the rules, and is often combined with the exempt seller role.

A jurisdictional arrangement allowing a distribution network service provider to remotely turn down or switch off a customer's solar system during an energy supply emergency, used as a last resort and only when AEMO requires it. The National Consumer Energy Resources Roadmap requires each state and territory to have one. In Victoria it applies to new, upgrading and replacement solar systems above 200 kW from 25 October 2023, and from 1 October 2024 to new systems of 200 kW and under and to legacy systems whose inverter is replaced other than like for like or under warranty.

Current status: Each jurisdiction is implementing it on its own timetable and through its own instrument, so the systems covered, the capacity thresholds and the start dates differ by state and territory.

Source: AEMO, Minimum system load fact sheet; Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, Victoria's emergency backstop mechanism for solar

An exemption from part of a liable entity's Renewable Energy Target obligation, claimed through an exemption certificate issued to an entity conducting eligible emissions-intensive trade-exposed activities. The entity passes the certificate to its liable entity in return for lower electricity charges.

Note: Eligibility attaches to defined activities that produce high emissions while facing international trade competition, not to high consumption on its own.

Source: Clean Energy Regulator, Renewable Energy Target liability and exemptions

A free, independent dispute resolution scheme that handles a customer's complaint about an energy business once the business's own complaints process has been exhausted. Each jurisdiction has its own: the Energy and Water Ombudsman NSW, which also takes Australian Capital Territory energy complaints, the Energy and Water Ombudsman Victoria, the Energy and Water Ombudsman Queensland, the Energy and Water Ombudsman South Australia, the Energy and Water Ombudsman Western Australia, the Energy Ombudsman in Tasmania, and in the Northern Territory the Territory's general Ombudsman rather than an industry scheme.

Note: Scheme membership and eligibility are set by each jurisdiction, and the schemes are generally open to residential and small business customers. A large customer's dispute may fall outside the scheme, leaving negotiation or the courts.

Source: AER, contacts for consumers; Utilities Commission, electricity supply complaints

A category of contractual instrument under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol's Scope 2 Guidance representing information about how energy was generated, but not the energy itself. The guidance uses the term as the general label for instruments that go by other names in individual markets, among them certificates, tags, credits and generator declarations.

Source: Greenhouse Gas Protocol, Scope 2 Guidance

Industry usage

An intermediary that approaches retailers on a buyer's behalf, obtains offers and arranges a supply contract. The role has no regulated definition in Australia and no licence or authorisation attaches to it. The sector's main conduct standard, the Energy Charter's National Customer Code for Energy Brokers, Consultants and Retailers, is voluntary and applies to signatories. Remuneration is commonly a commission from the retailer that wins the contract, recovered through the energy rate.

Source: The Energy Charter, National Customer Code for Energy Brokers, Consultants and Retailers

The method by which a measured gas volume becomes the energy quantity billed. Volume measured at the pressure and temperature prevailing at the meter is converted to the volume the gas would occupy at standard conditions, and that corrected volume is multiplied by the heating value of the gas to give energy. AEMO's energy calculation procedures, made under rule 303(6) of the National Gas Rules, set a method for each of the three meter types used at distribution delivery points: a flow corrector meter, a data logger meter and a basic meter.

Note: In the Victorian market the standard conditions are 101.325 kPa absolute and 15 degrees Celsius. Responsibility for performing the conversion is split, with the distribution business calculating consumed energy for Tariff V sites and AEMO doing so for Tariff D sites.

Source: AEMO, Wholesale Market Metering Procedures (Victoria), chapter 3, made under rule 303(6) of the National Gas Rules

An action or set of actions designed to improve efficiency, conserve energy or water, or manage demand. The term is defined this way in the measurement and verification protocol used in energy performance contracting, where the savings attributed to a measure are established by comparing consumption or demand before and after it is implemented, with adjustments for changes in conditions.

Source: Efficiency Valuation Organization, IPMVP Core Concepts

Industry usage

An intermediary engaged to advise on energy purchasing and run the procurement process, commonly also covering bill validation, metering and network tariff review, consumption reporting and contract administration. The role has no regulated definition in Australia. Remuneration varies by engagement: a fee for service or retainer paid by the buyer, a commission from the retailer, or a combination of the two. The Energy Charter's voluntary code covers consultants as well as brokers and retailers.

Source: The Energy Charter, National Customer Code for Energy Brokers, Consultants and Retailers

Under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (Measurement) Determination, the gigajoules of energy per unit of a fuel, measured as gross calorific value. Default factors for each fuel type are listed in Schedule 1 of the Determination.

Source: National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (Measurement) Determination 2008, section 1.8 and Schedule 1, current determination

The convention by which the National Electricity Market names the direction of an energy flow. Direction is stated by reference to the market rather than to the customer, so energy a customer consumes is export and energy generated into the market is import. Net energy in MSATS is export less import, which makes an end user's net quantity positive and a generator's negative. The same convention applies to reactive energy.

Source: AEMO, MSATS Procedures: National Metering Identifier, section 6.2

In the standards sense, the policies, objectives, processes and procedures an organisation uses to manage and improve its energy performance. AS/NZS ISO 50001:2021, which adopts ISO 50001:2018 without change, sets the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and improving one, covering energy policy, the energy review, energy baselines and performance indicators, operation, and performance evaluation. It does not prescribe how much energy performance must improve.

Note: The same three words are used loosely in the market for monitoring and reporting software. A platform that collects and displays consumption data may sit inside an energy management system, but it is not the management system the standard describes.

Source: Standards Australia, AS/NZS ISO 50001:2021 Energy management systems

The Victorian instrument setting the rules electricity and gas retailers must follow when selling energy to Victorian customers, covering customer contracts, billing, the contents of bills, payment difficulty and disconnection. It was deemed a code of practice made under Part 6 of the Essential Services Commission Act 2001 on 1 December 2021, remade in that form on 1 March 2022, and the current version is version 7.

Note: This is Victoria's substitute for the National Energy Retail Rules, which do not apply there. A retailer selling in Victoria and in a national framework jurisdiction is complying with two different retail rule sets.

Source: Essential Services Commission, Energy Retail Code of Practice

A New South Wales scheme, part of the NSW Energy Security Safeguard, that creates a market for energy savings certificates. Scheme participants must surrender certificates to meet an energy savings target, and accredited certificate providers create certificates by carrying out eligible energy saving activities in homes and businesses. It is established under the Electricity Supply Act 1995, administered and regulated by IPART, with NSW DCCEEW setting the policy and legal framework.

Source: IPART, about the ESS

Industry usage

A market term for a role that places energy purchasing inside a wider plan for a site or portfolio, covering matters such as demand and load shape, metering and tariff structure, on-site generation and storage, emissions reporting, and the timing and sequencing of contracting. The role has no regulated definition in Australia and no settled scope. Remuneration is commonly a fee for service or a retainer paid by the buyer.

Industry usage

A wholesale electricity market design in which generators earn revenue from the energy and market services they are dispatched to provide, with no separate payment for holding capacity available. The National Electricity Market is described this way. Western Australia's Wholesale Electricity Market runs an energy market alongside a capacity market, the Reserve Capacity Mechanism.

The component of an energy price covering compliance with renewable and energy efficiency schemes.

Source: AER, annual retail markets report 2024-25

Victoria's independent economic regulator, established under the Essential Services Commission Act 2001. In energy it licenses retailers and distributors, grants exemptions, makes the Energy Retail Code of Practice and other codes, sets the Victorian Default Offer, and reports on the Victorian retail market. It also regulates water, council rate caps, the Port of Melbourne and the Victorian Energy Upgrades scheme.

Note: Victoria sits outside the National Energy Customer Framework, so the ESC rather than the AER holds the retail consumer protection role in the state. The AER still regulates Victoria's electricity and gas networks.

Source: Essential Services Commission, about us

A quantity of energy assigned to a billing period by estimate rather than from a reading of the meter. For small customers the Retail Rules limit when a retailer may do this, to cases where the customer consents, where metering data is not provided, or where the retailer cannot reasonably or reliably base the bill on actual data, and a small customer must receive a bill based on meter data at least once every twelve months.

Source: National Energy Retail Rules, rules 20 and 21, current rules

The stated standards against which offers are assessed and compared. Victorian guidance describes them as the standards of judgment, and ranking or priority, used to assess offers and compare the alternatives respondents put forward. Commonwealth guidance requires that the criteria advertised in the request documentation be the criteria used to evaluate offers, be related to the response requirements, and not be altered during evaluation without a formal amendment to that documentation.

Source: Victorian Government, glossary of goods and services procurement terms; Department of Finance, ethics and probity in procurement

Industry usage

A defined list of circumstances giving the other party stated rights, commonly including suspension of supply, a demand for security and termination. The list typically reaches insolvency, breach of a material provision left unremedied after notice, a failed credit assessment and a failure to provide requested security.

Industry usage

A contract with no fixed end date, which continues until one party ends it. Where benefits such as discounts attach to it, they also have no end date.

A person buying energy from an exempt seller rather than from an authorised retailer.

Source: AER, retail exempt selling guideline

A person or business selling energy to occupants of a site without holding a retailer authorisation, under an exemption from the Australian Energy Regulator. Exemptions carry conditions covering pricing, billing, metering and dispute resolution.

Source: AER, retail exempt selling guideline

The measure of supply reliability used in the National Electricity Market, being the energy demanded that is forecast not to be supplied because generation, demand response or interregional network capability is insufficient, expressed as a percentage of the total energy demanded in a region in a financial year. Clause 3.9.3C(a) of the National Electricity Rules sets the reliability standard at a maximum of 0.002%.

Note: Clause 3.9.3C(a1) sets a separate Interim Reliability Measure of 0.0006%, expressed the same way, which the AEMC extended to the reliability forecast for Retailer Reliability Obligation purposes until 30 June 2028. A region can be reported as exceeding one threshold and not the other.

Source: AEMO, ESOO and reliability forecast methodology

Consent given by a customer who has been given the relevant information and has agreed to a specific thing. The Retail Rules require it for defined changes, including an agreement to treat several premises as aggregated.

Source: National Energy Retail Rules, rule 5

A cap on how much electricity a site may send into the distribution network. A static export limit is a fixed cap. A flexible export limit varies with network conditions, with signals sent to the site's inverter to adjust exports as those conditions change.

Note: The AER's guidance note on export limits is not binding on networks. The limit that applies to a site is the one in its connection agreement, set under the relevant network's connection policy, and in some locations a static zero export limit applies.

Source: AER, export limit guidance note, October 2024

Under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act, the reporting unit is an activity, or a series of activities including ancillary activities, that involves greenhouse gas emissions or the production or consumption of energy, and that either forms a single undertaking or enterprise meeting the requirements of the regulations, or is declared to be a facility by the Clean Energy Regulator.

Note: The test is the activity and the undertaking it forms rather than the premises, so a facility need not line up with a site, a lease boundary or a National Metering Identifier.

Source: National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007, section 9, current Act

The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting threshold measured at a single facility: 25 kilotonnes of CO2-e emitted, 100 terajoules of energy produced, or 100 terajoules of energy consumed, in a financial year. Where a group entity holds operational control for only part of a year, the Act applies the threshold on a pro rata basis for the days of control.

Source: National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007, sections 13(1)(d) and 13(2), current Act

The current available at a point in the network during a fault, expressed as the power it represents. The Rules define three phase fault level, measured in MVA, as the product of the pre-fault nominal voltage in kilovolts between a pair of phases, the fault current in each phase in kiloamperes for a three phase fault at that location, and the square root of three.

Source: National Electricity Rules, Chapter 10 (glossary), definition of three phase fault level, and clause S5.1a.9, current rules

A payment made by an electricity retailer in exchange for electricity fed into the grid from a customer's renewable generation.

Note: Arrangements differ by jurisdiction. Retailers set the rates they offer, except where a jurisdiction sets a minimum. In Victoria the Essential Services Commission determines minimum flat and time-varying rates that operate as floors, and retailers may offer more.

Source: AER, how to get value for your renewable energy and feed-in tariffs explained

A power purchase agreement made directly with a generator and settled entirely in cash against the spot price, with no electricity delivered under it and no retailer in the arrangement. The site's physical supply continues under its retail contract.

Source: NSW Government, NSW Guide to Corporate Power Purchase Agreements, section 4.2

Industry usage

A working document that gathers the figures needed to calculate the value of an offer or an engagement in one place: consumption by site and period, current and offered rates by charge component, network and metering charges, fees, and the term over which each applies. It is a calculation input, not a deliverable.

The Market Participant identified in MSATS as financially responsible at a connection point. It is usually a retailer, and may also be a Generator, Market Customer or Market Small Generation Aggregator. At most connection points it is the party entitled to appoint the metering coordinator.

Source: AEMO, Retail Electricity Market Procedures - Glossary and Framework; National Electricity Rules, clause 7.6.2

Transportation capacity reserved for one user, where a nomination made before the nomination cut-off time up to the reserved quantity will be scheduled, and nominations by other users on the same facility do not reduce it. The Rules define firm in those terms and treat capacity sold in the capacity auction as not firm.

Source: National Gas Rules, Part 25, rule 647 (definitions of firm, reserved and lower tier service), current rules

South Australia's scheme for securing long-duration dispatchable electricity capacity, established by the National Electricity (South Australia) (Firm Energy Reliability and Orderly Exit Management) Regulations 2025. A Minister declares a Firm Energy Target, a Scheme Administrator runs competitive tenders for long-term agreements, and an independent Financial Vehicle meets the underwriting and administration costs. The South Australian transmission network service provider passes those costs through to transmission customers, and they are in turn passed on to South Australian electricity consumers.

Current status: The regulations were finalised on 18 September 2025. The South Australian Government appointed the AER as a Scheme Regulator on 19 February 2026, the AER approved the Scheme Administrator's risk management framework in March 2026, and the AER published its Scheme Regulator guideline in July 2026 after a draft in April 2026. The first tender, opened in October 2025, sought 700 MW of long-duration capacity.

Source: AER, Firm Energy Reliability Mechanism; AER, appointed as SA FERM Scheme Regulator and approval of the risk management framework

Industry usage

Dispatchable capacity, typically storage, hydro, gas-fired generation or demand response, used to cover periods when wind and solar output is unavailable.

There is no formal definition in the rules. The regulator uses the word in quotation marks, and ties it to contracting: firming variable generation "can support contract market participation", because a firmed position can be sold forward where an unfirmed one cannot.

Source: AER, State of the energy market 2021, chapter 2

The change that shortened the trading interval in the National Electricity Market from 30 minutes to five, so that settlement is based on the same five-minute periods as dispatch. It took effect on 1 October 2021. Before it, the spot price for a 30-minute trading interval was the time-weighted average of six five-minute dispatch prices.

Source: AEMO, five minute settlement fact sheet

A market retail contract that states when it ends, or sets a method for working out when it ends.

Source: National Energy Retail Rules, rule 45A, current rules

Industry usage

A consumption pattern with little variation across the day, and often across the week and year as well, so average demand sits close to maximum demand. Data centres, cold stores and continuous process plants typically have one. Expressed as a ratio, a flat load is a high load factor.

Industry usage

A defined event beyond a party's reasonable control, and not reasonably capable of being prevented by it, which suspends that party's obligations for as long as it is prevented from performing them. No Australian statute defines the term, and the relief comes from the clause rather than from any implied rule.

Note: Suspension usually stops short of payment. Drafting commonly states that a force majeure event does not suspend any obligation to pay amounts owed to the other party.

Industry usage

The volume a buyer declares it will consume in each contract year, stated in the schedule and used to price the agreement. The minimum and maximum volumes that trigger adjustment charges are usually calculated as percentages of it.

Industry usage

The set of prices at which electricity for future periods can currently be contracted, read across successive quarters and years. It is specific to a region and to a contract profile, so a base curve and a peak curve differ.

No regulator or exchange definition could be located. Worth stating plainly in the entry: a forward curve is a market observable at a point in time, not a forecast.

Services AEMO procures to hold power system frequency within its operating limits. They divide into regulation services, which correct the small continuous imbalances between supply and demand, and contingency services, which restore frequency after an event such as a generator, load or network element tripping. Contingency services are procured in separate markets by response speed.

Source: AEMO, guide to ancillary services in the National Electricity Market

Industry usage

A retail power purchase agreement under which a fixed price applies to all of a buyer's consumption, covering both the part matched by the generator's output and the part supplied when output falls short. It is one of three firming models, alongside partially firmed and spot-exposed.

Source: Business Renewables Centre Australia, Renewable Energy Power Purchase Agreements in Queensland

AEMO's public register of natural gas infrastructure information, operated under the National Gas Law and Part 18 of the National Gas Rules. Operators of designated pipelines, storage facilities and production facilities must submit data including nameplate ratings, short and medium term capacity outlooks, daily production and flow, storage levels and nominations, which AEMO publishes.

Note: There are two boards. The national board covers New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania. Western Australia has a separate bulletin board, launched in 2013, with its own zones that AEMO must review at least once every five years.

Source: National Gas Rules, Part 18, Division 5, current rules; AEMO, Western Australian GBB zones review

The mandatory code of conduct for the east coast gas market, made as the Competition and Consumer (Gas Market Code) Regulations 2023 under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and in effect from 11 July 2023. It applies to covered gas producers and their affiliates selling to wholesale customers, requires good faith conduct and set information in offers, and prohibits supply of regulated gas above a reasonable price determined under the Code, set at $12 a gigajoule at commencement and reviewable by the ACCC. The ACCC monitors and enforces it.

Note: Several instruments are loosely called a gas code. This entry is the Commonwealth code governing wholesale gas supply. Separate retail market procedures and gas distribution codes operate under the National Gas Rules and under state instruments, and the Code does not apply to trades on the Victorian declared wholesale gas market or the short term trading markets. Exemptions from the price cap exist for producers making domestic supply commitments.

Source: ACCC, compliance guidelines for gas industry as new Gas Market Code takes effect

The composition and energy limits gas must meet at the point it is injected into a transmission or distribution system. Under the Rules the applicable specification is the standard gas quality specifications drawn from AS 4564, unless another standard has been approved for that injection point by AEMO or the distributor, or authorised under the law of the relevant jurisdiction.

Source: National Gas Rules, Part 19, rule 200, and Part 20, rule 364, current rules

AEMO's annual forecast of gas consumption and maximum gas demand, together with its assessment of whether the central and eastern gas markets can supply that demand across a twenty-year outlook period. It is published under section 91DA of the National Gas Law and Part 15D of the National Gas Rules. The 2026 edition was published in March 2026, based on information available as at 28 February 2026.

Note: AEMO publishes a separate statement of opportunities for the Western Australian gas market.

Source: AEMO, 2026 Gas Statement of Opportunities

Industry usage

A contract for the supply of the gas commodity itself, as distinct from a contract to transport it. It sets the contract quantities, the price and any price review mechanism, the delivery point at which the gas is handed over, and the take-or-pay and flexibility terms.

Note: The phrase is market usage and is defined in neither the National Gas Rules nor the Gas Market Code Regulations. The Regulations use the term agreement for supply of regulated gas, and impose procedural, price and good faith requirements on those agreements where the supplier is a covered supplier.

Source: Competition and Consumer (Gas Market Code) Regulations 2023, Parts 4 and 5

AEMO's voluntary exchange for standardised short-term physical gas products, with trading locations at Wallumbilla, operating since March 2014, and Moomba, from 1 June 2016. The product suite includes balance of day, day ahead, daily, weekly and monthly contracts. AEMO centrally settles transactions, manages prudential requirements and publishes reports.

Source: AEMO, Gas Supply Hub industry guide

The contract between a pipeline service provider and a user for transporting gas on that pipeline. It names the services taken, the receipt and delivery points, the maximum daily and hourly quantities, and the nomination, imbalance and overrun terms. The National Gas Rules call the equivalent instruments facility agreements, split between primary facility agreements and operational transportation service agreements.

Source: AER, access arrangement access principles (definition of Gas Transportation Agreement); National Gas Rules, Part 24, rule 593

The Victorian instrument setting the exemption framework for selling energy without a licence. Victoria regulates separately from the national framework, and its price cap for exempt sellers references the Victorian Default Offer rather than a local area retailer's standing offer.

Source: Essential Services Commission, electricity licence exemptions

A unit of energy equal to 1,000 megajoules, or 1,000,000,000 joules. It is the usual contracting and invoicing unit for gas supplied to commercial and industrial customers in Australia.

Conversions: 1 GJ = 1,000 MJ = 277.7778 kWh = 0.2777778 MWh. One megawatt hour is 3.6 GJ.

Source: National Measurement Regulations 1999, Schedule 1 (Australian legal units of measurement), current regulations

Industry usage

A development where the embedded network has not yet been established, so the arrangement is set from the start rather than inherited.

A government-managed accreditation program under which electricity retailers sell renewable electricity products, with the renewable generation independently audited. The New South Wales department is the program manager, on behalf of the National GreenPower Steering Group.

Source: greenpower.gov.au

Industry usage

The physical and contractual link between a site and the electricity network at an agreed connection point. The Rules use "connection" and "connection point"; "grid connection" is the market's shorthand for the same thing.

Note: Which part of the Rules governs a connection depends on what is connecting. Chapter 5A covers connections for retail customers and real estate developers, including micro embedded generators. Chapter 5 covers generator connections and connections to transmission and distribution networks more broadly.

Source: National Electricity Rules, chapters 5 and 5A, current rules

Industry usage

A clause stating that all amounts under the contract are GST exclusive, and that the charges payable are increased by the amount of GST once GST becomes payable on a taxable supply under the contract.

Note: GST itself is statutory. The GST Act sets out when a supply is a taxable supply, fixes the amount of GST at 10% of the value of the supply, and governs tax invoices. The gross-up clause allocates that amount to the buyer rather than creating the liability.

Source: A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Act 1999, sections 9-5, 9-70 and 29-70, current Act

Components of the voltage or current waveform at integer multiples of the supply frequency, produced by equipment that draws current non-linearly, such as variable speed drives, rectifiers and switch-mode power supplies. The Rules set harmonic voltage distortion as a system standard by reference to the compatibility levels in IEC/TR 61000.3.6, and require network service providers to establish planning levels for their own networks on that basis.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clauses S5.1a.6 and S5.1.6, current rules

The service of transporting gas through a pipeline or a distribution network, charged separately from the gas itself. Gas distributors publish their regulated tariffs as haulage reference services, with a site's tariff set by its annual consumption and its maximum hourly quantity.

Source: AER, Multinet annual tariff report (haulage reference service tariffs V, D and L); National Gas Rules, Part 8 (access arrangements for scheme pipelines)

A voluntary commitment negotiated between the Commonwealth Minister for Resources and east coast liquefied natural gas exporters, under which the exporters commit to supply sufficient, competitively priced gas to Australian users and to offer uncontracted gas to the domestic market.

Current status: The Department of Industry, Science and Resources records the agreement as in place until 1 January 2026. Exposure drafts for a Domestic Gas Reservation Bill 2026 were released for consultation between 10 and 24 September 2026.

Source: Department of Industry, Science and Resources, domestic gas supply

The energy content of gas per unit of volume at standard conditions, expressed in megajoules per standard cubic metre. It is the factor that turns a corrected gas volume into an energy quantity. AEMO calculates and publishes heating values for the Victorian market, and the Essential Services Commission's gas distribution code of practice governs how they are applied there.

Note: Gas composition varies with the source of supply and with flow conditions, so the heating value applied to a site is a figure published for an area and a period rather than a constant.

Source: AEMO, Wholesale Market Metering Procedures (Victoria), chapter 3

Entering financial contracts that fix a price for future electricity, so that movements in the spot price are offset.

Source: AER, State of the energy market

A wholesale electricity price outcome the AER counts and reports where a region's 30-minute price exceeds $5,000 per megawatt hour. The AER publishes the count by region each quarter alongside the quarter's average prices.

Note: The criteria for the significant price outcomes the AER must monitor and report on are set in its significant price reporting guidelines, made under the National Electricity Rules rather than fixed in the Rules themselves.

Source: AER, industry charts; National Electricity Rules, clauses 3.13.7 and 3.13.7A, current rules

A voltage greater than 1 kV. Networks use the term for their sub-transmission and distribution feeders, and for sites that take supply directly at those voltages rather than through a shared distribution substation.

Note: Connecting at high voltage changes which tariff class a site falls into, because classes are constituted partly on the nature of the connection. A high voltage class in a network's schedule usually carries different charging parameters and a different minimum chargeable demand from the low voltage class in the same schedule.

Source: National Electricity Rules, chapter 10 (glossary), current rules

The ability of a network to accept energy generated by consumer energy resources without affecting power quality to the point where the network stops operating within its defined operational limits, such as voltage or thermal limits. The AER notes that it varies by location and by time, with consumption and the level of generation connected.

Note: Networks assess hosting capacity by different methods, probabilistic or deterministic, and the AER's position is that assessments and the methodologies behind them should be published so export limits are not set conservatively low.

Source: AER, export limit guidance note, October 2024

Industry usage

Industry shorthand for data centre capacity built at the largest scale, normally a single operator's purpose-built facility or campus serving cloud or AI workloads. There is no regulated definition and no agreed capacity threshold, so the word describes an operating model rather than a size.

The difference between the gas a shipper puts into a pipeline and the gas taken out at the delivery points, accumulated over time. The Operational Transportation Service Code requires a shipper to use reasonable endeavours to bring its accumulated imbalance to zero at the end of each day, sets an imbalance allowance, and provides for an imbalance charge where the accumulated imbalance exceeds that allowance.

Note: The Victorian declared wholesale gas market uses imbalance in a separate, defined settlement sense, where a participant's scheduled and actual imbalances determine its imbalance and deviation payments.

Source: Operational Transportation Service Code, clauses 12 and 12.4, as amended by the AER; National Gas Rules, Part 19, rule 235 (imbalance payments and deviation payments)

Industry usage

A promise to cover a defined category of the other party's loss. It operates on the trigger the clause states rather than on proof of breach, so it can be called on in circumstances where no breach has occurred.

An exemption granted on application, required where a seller does not fit a deemed or registrable class. Retrofitted embedded networks generally need one where consent cannot be obtained from every affected customer.

Source: AER, retail exempt selling guideline

The megawatt quantity AEMO determines for each Market Participant in Western Australia's Wholesale Electricity Market, setting that participant's share of the Reserve Capacity Mechanism's cost. It is determined under clause 4.28.7 of the Electricity System and Market Rules, revisable under clause 4.28.11A, recalculated monthly in accordance with Appendix 5, and based for an existing interval meter on the median metered consumption during the twelve Peak SWIS Trading Intervals of the preceding Hot Season.

Current status: Stage two of the Coordinator of Energy's review of the Reserve Capacity Mechanism assessed the consequences for the Individual Reserve Capacity Requirement, with detailed design to be put forward as proposed rule amendments at stage three.

Source: AEMO, WEM Individual Reserve Capacity Requirement calculations, version 2.2, published 7 March 2025

Defined in the Rules as the contribution to the capability of the power system to resist changes in frequency by means of an inertial response from a generating unit, bidirectional unit, network element or other equipment. An inertial response is the immediate, inherent electrical power exchange from a device on the power system in response to a frequency disturbance, and power system inertia is the aggregate equivalent inertia of all devices capable of providing one.

Note: AEMO divides the national grid into inertia sub-networks and determines the inertia levels each must hold for satisfactory and secure operation, under clause 5.20B of the Rules and its Inertia Requirements Methodology.

Source: National Electricity Rules, Chapter 10 glossary, quoted in AEMO, Inertia Requirements Methodology, section 2.1.1

Industry usage

A payment or capital works contribution made by an embedded network operator towards the site's electrical infrastructure, usually recovered across the term of the agreement.

AEMO's roadmap for the National Electricity Market, which the National Electricity Rules require it to produce every two years under clause 5.22, across a planning horizon of at least twenty years. It sets an optimal development path, being the least-cost combination of generation, storage and network investment to meet forecast consumer needs and government policies. The 2026 plan was published on 25 June 2026 and runs to 2050.

Source: AEMO, 2026 Integrated System Plan; National Electricity Rules, clause 5.22, current rules

A transmission line, or group of transmission lines, that connects the transmission networks in adjacent regions. A regulated interconnector is one subject to the transmission service regulation and pricing arrangements in Chapter 6A of the Rules, which distinguishes it from a market network service.

Source: National Electricity Rules, Chapter 10 definitions, current rules

A load able to be disconnected, manually or automatically, which is provided for the restoration or control of power system frequency by AEMO to cater for contingency events or shortages of supply.

Note: The market also uses the phrase loosely for any load a contract permits to be cut, including interruption arranged directly with a retailer or a network. The defined term is narrower and attaches to load made available to AEMO for frequency and reserve purposes.

Source: National Electricity Rules, chapter 10 (glossary), current rules

Consumption data recorded by a meter in intervals that correspond to, or divide into, a market trading interval. In the National Electricity Market a trading interval is five minutes, and older meters record in thirty-minute intervals.

Source: AEMC, National Electricity Rules, chapter 10 definitions, current rules

The field in an interval metering data file stating the recording period of each value, in minutes. The Meter Data File Format Specification permits 1, 5, 10, 15 and 30 minutes.

Source: AEMO, Meter Data File Format Specification NEM12 & NEM13, NMI data details record, published with the metering procedures

The amounts AEMO determines as payable after an AEMO intervention event, being the issue of a direction or the exercise of the Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader. Directed participants and holders of exercised reserve contracts are compensated, as are affected participants whose dispatch was changed by the intervention, and submissions can be made for additional amounts covering direct costs such as fuel, incremental maintenance and staffing. Compensation for market suspension pricing schedule periods runs through separate provisions, and the AEMC administers claims arising from the application of the administered price cap or administered floor price.

Source: AEMO, Guide to Intervention Pricing

The energy delivered by a power of one kilowatt sustained for one hour. It is an Australian legal unit of measurement of work and energy, and it is the standard unit in which electricity consumption is metered and billed. Because a watt is one joule per second and an hour is 3,600 seconds, one kilowatt hour is 1,000 x 3,600 joules, that is 3,600,000 joules, or 3.6 megajoules exactly.

Conversions: 1 kWh = 3.6 MJ. 1,000 kWh = 1 MWh. 1 GJ = 277.7778 kWh. 1 MJ = 0.2777778 kWh.

Source: National Measurement Regulations 1999, Schedule 1 (Australian legal units of measurement), current regulations

Kilovolt-ampere, the unit of apparent power. One kVA is 1,000 volt-amperes. The regulator describes apparent power as a measure of the current and voltage, which "will differ from real power when the current and voltage are not in phase".

Source: AER, tariff structure statement glossary

Kilovolt-ampere reactive hour, the unit of reactive energy. The Rules define reactive energy as a measure, in varhour, of the alternating exchange of stored energy in inductors and capacitors, being the time integral of the product of voltage and the out-of-phase component of current flow across a connection point. One kVArh is 1,000 varhours.

Source: National Electricity Rules, Chapter 10 (glossary), definition of reactive energy, current rules

Kilowatt, the unit of real power, being the rate at which energy is used. One kilowatt is 1,000 watts. Power is a rate; energy is the quantity that accumulates, which is why a kilowatt hour is one kilowatt of power used for one hour.

Source: AER, tariff structure statement glossary

A condition AEMO declares for a region when it determines, under its Reserve Level Declaration Guidelines, that the probability of load shedding other than of interruptible load is, or is forecast to be, more than remote. Three levels are declared, in increasing severity. LOR1 applies where the consecutive occurrence of both the largest and the second largest relevant credible contingency events would cause load shedding, or forecast reserves fall below that measure. LOR2 applies where the largest relevant credible contingency event alone would cause it, or forecast reserves fall below that measure. LOR3 applies where load shedding is occurring because of a reserve shortfall, or forecast reserves are at or below zero.

Source: AEMO, Reserve Level Declaration Guidelines

A business customer consuming energy at or above the upper consumption threshold. Under the national regulations the threshold is 100 MWh a year for electricity and 1 TJ a year for gas, and some jurisdictions set a different figure: South Australia 160 MWh, Tasmania 150 MWh, Victoria 40 MWh under its own framework. The Northern Territory sits outside the national retail framework and applies its own bands under the Territory's Electricity Industry Performance Code, with a small customer threshold of 160 MWh a year and a separate large customer band above 750 MWh.

Source: AER, Retail Exempt Selling Guideline version 7, August 2025; Victorian threshold from the ESC

Industry usage

A descriptive term for a single customer load big enough to matter to network and power system planning. It carries no definition of its own in the Rules, and no single threshold applies across the frameworks that use it.

Note: The adjacent regulated term is the large inverter-based load. In March 2026 the AEMC published a draft rule that would define and classify large inverter-based loads in the Rules and raise the threshold for facilities connecting to a distribution network from 5 MW to 30 MW, so that disturbance ride-through standards apply to the facilities most able to affect power system security. Submissions closed on 7 May 2026, with a final rule to follow.

A certificate created for each megawatt hour of electricity generated by an accredited renewable power station under the Renewable Energy Target. Certificates are traded separately from the electricity itself and are surrendered to make a renewable claim.

Source: Clean Energy Regulator, voluntary offsetting and surrender

Any type 5 or type 6 metering installation in operation, other than a type 5 installation capable of remote acquisition. The term was added to the Rules by the Accelerating Smart Meter Deployment Rule, which requires each local network service provider to publish a legacy meter replacement plan and sets the objective of replacing all legacy meters with type 4 metering installations between 1 December 2025 and 30 November 2030.

Note: Legacy meter and accumulation meter overlap but are not the same. Every type 6 accumulation installation in service is a legacy meter, and so is a manually read interval installation without remote acquisition, which is not an accumulation meter at all.

Source: National Electricity Amendment (Accelerating smart meter deployment) Rule 2024 No. 20, clause 11.177.1, final rule

A written authority from a customer allowing a third party to obtain information about the customer's energy accounts and to communicate with retailers and distributors on their behalf. It does not transfer the power to enter or change a contract unless it says so.

Source: The underlying right of access sits in the National Electricity Rules, clause 7.15.5, which permits a retail customer or a customer authorised representative to obtain metering data on request. Current rules

A purchase of a project's large-scale generation certificates without taking a price position on the electricity, leaving the buyer's existing retail supply contract in place. The certificates are surrendered against consumption to support a renewable claim.

Current status: The Renewable Energy Target ends on 31 December 2030 and no further large-scale generation certificates are created for generation after that date. The Renewable Electricity Guarantee of Origin scheme continues beyond it, so an arrangement running past 2030 spans two certificate schemes.

Source: NSW Government, NSW Guide to Corporate Power Purchase Agreements, section 4.1; Clean Energy Regulator, Renewable Energy Target

Industry usage

A ceiling on what each party can be required to pay the other, commonly expressed as the total charges paid in the twelve months before a claim and applied to all claims in a year in aggregate. Stated categories usually sit outside it, including death or personal injury, damage to property, fraud or wilful misconduct, and any liability that cannot be limited by law.

Note: The Australian Consumer Law makes a contract term void to the extent it excludes, restricts or modifies the consumer guarantees or liability for failing to comply with them, so a cap does not reach that liability. For services other than those of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use, section 64A permits a term limiting that liability to supplying the services again or paying the cost of having them supplied again, unless the buyer establishes that reliance on the term is not fair or reasonable.

Source: Australian Consumer Law, sections 64 and 64A, in Competition and Consumer Act 2010 Schedule 2

An estimate of the export parity price a gas supplier could expect for exporting its gas, worked out by taking the price obtainable for liquefied natural gas and deducting the supplier's costs of converting the gas to LNG and shipping it to the destination port. The ACCC publishes a series of these estimates for the east coast gas market.

Source: ACCC, LNG netback price series

Industry usage

The ratio of average demand to peak demand over a period, expressed as a percentage. A site consuming 100 kW steadily has a load factor near 100%; a site averaging 100 kW but peaking at 400 kW has a load factor of 25%.

Comparing a site's consumption interval by interval against a generator's output over the same intervals, to establish how much of the load the generation covers, how much must be supplied from elsewhere, and how much generation exceeds consumption and is sold to the market.

Source: Business Renewables Centre Australia, Renewable Energy Power Purchase Agreements in Queensland

Reducing or disconnecting load from the power system, other than by means of wholesale demand response. It is the last measure available when generation and reserves cannot meet demand, and it is the outcome AEMO's lack of reserve declarations are calibrated to avoid.

Source: National Electricity Rules, Chapter 10 definitions, current rules

The retailer designated for a distribution area, whose standing offer price sets the cap an exempt seller may charge. An exempt seller must not charge more than the local area retailer would charge for the same supply, applied component by component.

Source: AER, retail exempt selling guideline, condition 7

Industry usage

Market shorthand for the distributor-supplied metering role that applied before metering was opened to competition, when the local network service provider provided and maintained most meters and held the metering obligations at the connection point.

Note: The phrase has no definition in the Rules or in AEMO's procedures, and the regulated role it describes was the responsible person, which for type 5, 6 and 7 metering installations was typically the local network service provider. The responsible person was replaced by the metering coordinator on 1 December 2017 under the National Electricity Amendment (Expanding competition in metering and related services) Rule 2015 No. 12. AEMO's systems still carry the role code RP for the metering coordinator.

Source: AEMC, Expanding competition in metering and related services; AEMO, Retail Electricity Market Procedures - Glossary and Framework, section 2.8

The scope 2 accounting method that reflects the average emissions intensity of the grids on which energy consumption occurs, using mostly grid-average emission factor data. Grid-average factors are not adjusted for contractual claims made by suppliers or end users.

Note: The Greenhouse Gas Protocol requires companies operating in markets where contractual instruments are available to report scope 2 under both this method and the market-based method, labelled separately. This is dual reporting.

Source: Greenhouse Gas Protocol, Scope 2 Guidance

A New South Wales revenue underwriting contract for generation, long-duration storage or firming capacity, awarded by competitive tender by the Consumer Trustee under the Electricity Infrastructure Investment Act 2020. The costs are paid from the New South Wales Electricity Infrastructure Fund. The AER makes an annual contribution determination under section 56 of that Act, the Scheme Financial Vehicle recovers the determined amount through contribution orders issued to the New South Wales distribution network service providers, and those costs are passed through to retailers, which recover them from New South Wales customers through retail bills.

Source: AER, NSW Electricity Infrastructure Fund contribution determination guideline, September 2026

Industry usage

A voltage at or below 1 kV, the level at which most sites take supply. Nominal low voltage supply in Australia is 230 volts single phase and 400 volts three phase.

Note: The Rules define high voltage as a voltage greater than 1 kV but do not define low voltage, so the boundary is the complement of the defined term. Networks commonly divide their low voltage customers further, with a separate class above a stated demand or annual consumption level, and connection at high voltage instead moves a site to a different tariff class again. Both splits sit in the relevant network's tariff schedule.

Source: National Electricity Rules, chapter 10 (glossary), by reference to the definition of high voltage, current rules

Industry usage

An obligation to return premises or equipment to a defined condition at the end of an agreement.

Industry usage

Gas a buyer has paid for under a take-or-pay obligation without taking it, and which the agreement allows it to take in a later period at no further charge. The conditions, including any period within which it must be taken, are set by the agreement.

A factor representing the marginal transmission losses between a transmission network connection point and the regional reference node for that region. AEMO calculates one for each connection point for each financial year, under a methodology it determines, publishes and maintains, and applies it in settling energy at that point.

Note: The National Electricity Rules call these intra-regional loss factors. "Marginal loss factor" is the operational and market name, and AEMO uses it in its own loss factor publications. The Rules require AEMO to calculate intra-regional loss factors and inter-regional loss factor equations annually and publish the results by 1 April, before the financial year they apply to, with quarterly updates during the year to pick up new and revised connection points.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clauses 3.6.1 and 3.6.2, current rules; AEMO, loss factors and regional boundaries

A customer registered with AEMO under clause 2.3.4 of the National Electricity Rules, whose activities relate to a market load and which purchases all its electricity from the spot market. A Market Customer pays AEMO for electricity supplied at each connection point for each trading interval. First-tier and second-tier Customers must not participate in the spot market for their first-tier or second-tier loads.

Note: The same words carry different meanings elsewhere. Victoria's wholesale gas market uses registrable capacities named Market Participant - Transmission Customer and Market Participant - Distribution Customer, each being an end user that buys natural gas in the declared wholesale gas market and withdraws it from the declared transmission system or a declared distribution system. Western Australia's rules formerly had a Market Customer class, which is deemed registered in the single Market Participant class from the New WEM Commencement Day.

Source: AEMO, application guide, registering as a Customer in the NEM; National Gas Rules, rule 135A, current rules

Fees AEMO charges Registered Participants to recover the costs of operating and administering the markets it runs. The amounts are set each year through AEMO's budget and fees process, and the structure under which they are levied is determined by AEMO after consultation under the Rules. Where a retailer passes them on, they appear on an invoice as a separate market charge, often split between market operation and ancillary services.

Note: The National Electricity Rules use the term participant fees. "Market fees" is the name that appears on invoices and in AEMO's own fees publications, and the two refer to the same charges.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clause 2.11, current rules; AEMO, energy market fees and charges

AEMO's formal message to market participants about an event affecting the market, issued through the Market Management System and updated in real time. Notices carry advance notice of low reserve conditions, the status of market systems, over-constrained dispatch, price adjustments, constraints, directions, interventions and market suspensions.

Source: AEMO, NEM events and reports

The highest price the spot market can reach in a trading interval in the National Electricity Market. The AEMC sets it in the National Electricity Rules, and it is adjusted for the consumer price index each year by 28 February. It is $23,200 a megawatt hour for the year from 1 July 2026, up from $20,300 a megawatt hour in 2025-26, following a staged increase to the base rate made by rule in December 2023.

Source: AEMC, AEMC updates market price cap for 2026-27

The lowest price the spot market can reach in a trading interval in the National Electricity Market, set at negative $1,000 a megawatt hour. Unlike the cap, it is not indexed to the consumer price index and has not changed.

Note: The National Electricity Rules call it the market floor price. Both names are in use.

Source: AER, State of the energy market 2025, chapter 2

A retail contract negotiated between a retailer and a customer on terms other than the standard retail contract. Under the Retail Law these are small customer contracts; large customer agreements sit outside that framework entirely.

Source: National Energy Retail Law, current Act

AEMO's suspension of the spot market in a region. It is available where that region's power system has collapsed to a black system, where a participating jurisdiction has directed suspension after formally declaring a state of emergency, or where AEMO determines it has become impossible to operate the spot market in accordance with the Rules. AEMO may not suspend solely because prices have reached the market price cap or floor, or because it has issued a direction or otherwise intervened. Bidding and dispatch continue under rule 3.8 of the Rules where AEMO considers that practical, and the market resumes once none of the three conditions applies and AEMO is satisfied there is minimal possibility of suspending again within 24 hours for the same cause.

Source: AEMO, Guide to Market Suspension in the NEM

The set of pre-published prices AEMO applies in a suspended region where it is not practical to keep determining prices through dispatch. Each schedule holds two sets of half-hourly prices for every region and market, one for weekdays and one for weekends and public holidays, each price being the historical average for that region, market, day type and half hour across the 28 days to the end of the preceding billing week. AEMO publishes a new schedule weekly and at least 14 days before the first day it relates to.

Source: AEMO, Guide to the Market Suspension Pricing Schedule

The scope 2 accounting method that reflects emissions from the electricity a company has purposefully chosen, or its lack of choice. It derives emission factors from contractual instruments, which include energy attribute certificates, direct contracts for generation, supplier-specific emission rates, and residual mix factors where no qualifying contractual information applies.

Note: The Greenhouse Gas Protocol sets quality criteria that a contractual instrument must meet to be used as a data source under this method.

Source: Greenhouse Gas Protocol, Scope 2 Guidance

Industry usage

A clause allowing a party to reopen, suspend or exit where defined circumstances worsen significantly. No Australian statute defines it, and what counts as material is whatever the clause states.

Note: The phrase carries no settled content. Two agreements using it can allocate very different rights, because the test is built entirely from the clause's own wording on what must change, by how much, and whose assessment decides.

Industry usage

The largest volume of gas a buyer may take in a day under a supply or transportation agreement.

The highest amount of electrical power delivered, or forecast to be delivered, over a defined period such as a day, week, month, season or year, either at a connection point or simultaneously across a defined set of connection points.

Note: What counts for billing is narrower than the defined term. Networks differ on the measurement interval, on whether demand is measured in kW or kVA, and on the hours, days and months in which a recorded peak counts. The CitiPower and Powercor large business tariffs, for example, use the maximum 15-minute kVA demand measured between 7am and 7pm on workdays.

Source: National Electricity Rules, chapter 10 (glossary), current rules

The highest quantity of gas, in gigajoules per hour, withdrawn at a delivery point. Gas distribution demand tariffs for larger sites are charged per unit of maximum hourly quantity, and a gas transportation agreement states an agreed maximum hourly quantity for each delivery point.

Note: Maximum hourly quantity and maximum daily quantity measure different things. The hourly figure governs the rate of flow at a point within the gas day; the daily figure governs the total for the whole gas day.

Source: AER, Multinet annual tariff report (Tariff D maximum hourly quantity, measured in GJ per hour); AER, Multinet tariff schedule 2026-27

A unit of energy equal to 1,000,000 joules. It is the unit in which gas consumption is metered and billed on most Australian retail and small business invoices, while wholesale and large customer gas contracts are written in gigajoules and terajoules.

Conversions: 1 MJ = 0.2777778 kWh. 1 kWh = 3.6 MJ. 1,000 MJ = 1 GJ. 1,000,000 MJ = 1 TJ.

Source: National Measurement Regulations 1999, Schedule 1 (Australian legal units of measurement), current regulations

One thousand kilowatt hours. It is the unit in which wholesale electricity volumes are settled and in which wholesale and contract prices are quoted, as dollars per megawatt hour.

Conversions: 1 MWh = 1,000 kWh = 3,600 MJ = 3.6 GJ = 3,600,000,000 joules. 1 TJ = 277.7778 MWh.

Source: National Measurement Regulations 1999, Schedule 1 (Australian legal units of measurement), current regulations

Industry usage

The order in which offered generation is dispatched, cheapest first. In the National Electricity Market, AEMO selects the lowest priced offers and then progressively more expensive ones until enough has been dispatched to meet demand, and the last generator needed sets the spot price for that dispatch interval.

Source: AER, Wholesale electricity market performance report 2026

Any alteration or replacement of a metering installation. The Rules require it to be managed under the meter churn procedures AEMO publishes for the metering coordinator, metering provider, metering data provider and financially responsible Market Participant, and those procedures must allow a new or replacement installation to be fitted as soon as practicable after AEMO has effected the transfer of the market load at the connection point.

Note: In market usage the term is often narrowed to the meter replacement that follows a change of retailer or metering coordinator. The defined meaning is wider and covers any alteration or replacement, however it arises.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clauses 7.8.9(a) and 7.8.9(f); AEMO, Retail Electricity Market Procedures - Glossary and Framework

The factor applied to a meter register reading to turn it into a quantity of billable energy. It is held in MSATS as a mandatory item of register-level standing data, supplied by the metering provider. Where the meter measures a scaled-down current through instrument transformers, the multiplier restores the reading to the quantity the site drew. Where the whole of the load current passes through the meter it is ordinarily one.

Source: AEMO, Standing Data for MSATS, register-level standing data

Industry usage

A charge for the provision, installation, maintenance and reading of a metering installation at a connection point. On a large customer invoice it is commonly a separate line; on a small customer invoice it may sit inside network or retail charges rather than being shown on its own.

Note: Under the Rules a metering coordinator is responsible for the metering installation at a connection point, including its provision, installation and maintenance and the collection and delivery of metering data. Who holds that role determines whose charge it is. Where the meter is a regulated distributor asset the charge forms part of regulated network charges and the AER approves the price; where metering is contestable the charge is commercial and is not subject to AER price approval.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clause 7.3.1, current rules

The registered participant responsible, for the term of its appointment at a connection point, for the provision, installation and maintenance of the metering installation. It appoints the metering provider and the metering data provider, and tells the financially responsible Market Participant who they are.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clauses 7.3.1 and 7.3.2

Industry usage

A party that collects, processes and delivers metering data. The Rules give this function to the metering data provider, and the two names are used in the market for the same role.

A party accredited by AEMO to collect, process and deliver metering data for a connection point. The metering coordinator appoints the metering data provider.

Source: National Electricity Rules, chapter 7, current rules

The AEMO procedures setting the minimum requirements for the manner and form in which a retail customer's metering data is provided when the customer, or its authorised representative, requests it from the retailer or the distributor. They specify both a detailed and a summary data format, and a response timeframe of no more than 10 business days, with a longer allowance where one representative requests data for several customers of the same party.

Source: National Electricity Rules, rule 7.14, current rules

The classification that fixes a metering installation's accuracy requirements and determines how its data is obtained. Types 1, 2 and 3 cover connection points by annual energy throughput: above 1,000 GWh, between 100 and 1,000 GWh, and from 0.75 GWh to under 100 GWh. Type 4 is the smart metering installation that meets the minimum services specification, and is required for any new or replacement installation at a small customer's connection point. Type 4A is a manually read interval installation permitted where AEMO has exempted the metering coordinator because no telecommunications network enables remote access. Type 5 is a manually read interval installation, type 6 an accumulation installation, and type 7 an unmetered connection point where the load is small and predictable enough for AEMO to allow it to be calculated rather than measured.

Note: Each jurisdiction sets its own annual consumption ceiling for types 4A, 5 and 6, recorded in AEMO's metrology procedure, and 750 MWh a year is the maximum the Rules permit for any of them.

Source: National Electricity Rules, clauses 7.8.3, 7.8.4 and 7.8.8 and Schedule 7.4; AEMO, Metrology Procedure Part A

A party accredited by AEMO to provide, install and maintain metering installations. The metering coordinator appoints the metering provider for a connection point.

Source: National Electricity Rules, chapter 7, current rules

A two-character numeric flag on a reading in a metering data file naming which substitution or estimation method produced it. It occupies the second and third characters of the data quality field, behind the quality flag, and is mandatory where the quality flag records estimated or substituted data. Its permitted values correspond to the substitution and estimation types in AEMO's metrology procedure and are listed in an appendix to the Meter Data File Format Specification.

Source: AEMO, Meter Data File Format Specification NEM12 & NEM13, method flags appendix

The floor a network applies to chargeable demand, so a site is billed on at least that level of demand whether or not its recorded demand reaches it.

Note: The figure belongs to the tariff, not to the market. On the CitiPower and Powercor networks the rolling demand charge carries a minimum chargeable demand of 120 kVA for large low voltage, 500 kVA for high voltage and 5 MVA for sub-transmission. The applicable figure is the one in the relevant network's tariff schedule or pricing proposal.

Source: CitiPower and Powercor, large business tariffs fact sheet

The lowest level of demand on a network or in a region over a period. At system level AEMO measures minimum operational demand, being the lowest demand that has to be met by grid-scale generation, which excludes what is supplied by rooftop solar and other generation behind the meter.

Note: This is the system-level sense and is distinct from minimum chargeable demand, which is a billing floor applied to one site. Growth in rooftop solar has lowered minimum operational demand and moved the daily minimum from overnight to the middle of the day.

Source: AEMO, minimum operational demand fact sheet

Periods when large volumes of rooftop solar reduce the demand met from grid-scale generation far enough to limit access to essential system services and create a power system security risk. They occur on mild, sunny days, typically in autumn and spring. AEMO signals them through three tiers of market notice: MSL1 is advance notice of a possible event, MSL2 states that grid-scale actions are being taken, and MSL3 is the activation of solar management programmes run by state governments and distribution networks.

Current status: Two rule change requests on the minimum system load framework, one of them from the AEMC's Reliability Panel, are before the AEMC. It published a consultation paper on 9 July 2026 and a draft determination is due by 3 December 2026.

Source: AEMO, Minimum system load fact sheet

A ten-character identifier for a gas supply point. It is not a separate scheme from the electricity identifier: AEMO describes a MIRN as a sub-class of National Metering Identifier, using the block of identifiers beginning with 5 that was set aside for the gas industry. The characters encode the market, the state and the distributor.

The acronym is expanded three different ways within AEMO's own procedure, as Meter Installation Registration Number, Metering Installation Registration Number and Metering Identification Registration Number.