Leading energy company, Jemena, has released its draft Jemena Electricity Networks 2021-25 Plan, outlining the company’s future plans for evolving the energy grid, reducing residential electricity prices and maintaining reliability of the network.
Jemena’s electricity network delivers electricity to over 330,000 homes and businesses in northern and western Melbourne.
“We are now calling on customers to provide feedback on the draft Plan as part of the second round of customer consultation,” said Jemena Managing Director Frank Tudor.
The draft Plan was developed following extensive consultation with residential and business customers to ensure it meets their needs over the next five years. The Plan is available for customer feedback over a two-month period before it is submitted to the Australian Energy Regulator in mid-2019.
Keeping energy affordable while preparing the network for the future
Throughout consultations, customers consistently highlighted energy affordability as a priority. Jemena has committed to play its part in reducing bills for residential customers for the next five years.
“Affordability was an issue that almost every customer raised with us during the first phase of engagement. The draft Plan proposes to reduce residential electricity network prices by an average of $90 over five years while continuing to maintain the reliability of the network. This is in addition to the $90 reduction on average residential prices we have delivered since 2016,” said Mr Tudor.
Preparing the grid to support increased use of renewable energy was also a top priority for customers.
“Customers told us they want a network capable of supporting and enabling increased feed-in of solar and other renewable generation. The draft Plan includes a number of initiatives that enable more feed-in to the grid from Distributed Energy Resources like solar panels and battery storage,” said Mr Tudor.
“Over the long-term, we will continue to embrace new technologies that transform how customers use energy.”
Listening to our customers
“As part of our first phase of customer consultation we held a series of People’s Panel workshops where we engaged actively over many weeks with a cross section of community members in Melbourne’s north-west to understand their views on the future of our electricity network. Not only did we listen to what our customers wanted, we adopted each of the 25 recommendations from the People’s Panel.
“This work aligns with our commitment to the Energy Charter, which is an industry initiative that aims to deliver improved customer outcomes by driving collaboration across the energy sector. The charter, released this week, strives to put customers at the centre of our business and the energy system.”
“We’re now encouraging customers to provide feedback on the draft Plan.”
Visit yourgrid.jemena.com.au to view and submit feedback on the draft Electricity Pricing and Services Plan 2021-25. Submissions are due by 31 March 2019.
