Nexa Advisory welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Australian Energy Regulator’s (AER) consultation on Essential Energy’s ring-fencing waiver application for its proposed ARENA-funded ‘Plug and Play’ electric vehicle charging infrastructure trial.
Nexa supports the objective of accelerating the rollout of public electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure. In particular to support regional communities, renters, households without access to off-street parking, fleets, visitors, and drivers undertaking longer journeys. Public charging will be essential to building consumer confidence in EV adoption.
However, we believe accelerating EV charging should not come at the expense of competition, consumer protection, or the integrity of ring-fencing arrangements.
Distribution Network Service Providers (DNSPs) have an important role in enabling the EV charging rollout, via efficient connections, providing network data, supporting make-ready works, and ensuring safe operation of their network assets. However, EV charging infrastructure is a contestable transport-related service. As such, regulated monopoly DNSPs should not, by default, own, control, or select contestable EV charging assets.
While Essential Energy’s application for a Ring-fencing Guideline waiver is narrower and better structured than some previous DNSP-led proposals, Nexa Advisory does not support the AER granting Essential Energy’s waiver in its current form.
Key recommendations
Nexa recommends that the AER:
- Refuse the waiver in its current form.
- Avoid making waiver decisions that pre-empt the AEMC’s related EV charging and ring-fencing rule change processes, or the AER’s own review of the Ring-fencing Guideline.
- Defer any decision on Stream 2 until Stream 1 has been tested and independently assessed. Stream 2 should not proceed until there is evidence that reducing connection and site-selection barriers is insufficient to unlock CPO-led delivery.
- Require Essential Energy to demonstrate clear, location-specific market failure before any DNSP-owned charger is deployed.
- Require Essential Energy to publish network data, pole suitability information, hosting capacity information and connection timeframes that would allow CPOs, councils and communities to identify and deliver viable sites without DNSP ownership.
- Require all site selection to be CPO-led or, at minimum, CPO-validated, council-supported and customer-informed.
- Require success to be measured by outcomes for EV drivers, including utilisation, reliability, pricing, customer experience, accessibility and evidence of EV uptake, not simply the rollout of infrastructure.
- Prohibit any recovery of Stream 2 costs through regulated network charges, the RAB, demand management mechanisms, shared asset treatment or future regulatory proposals.
- Prohibit Essential Energy or any related entity from providing retail charging, setting prices, billing customers, managing customer accounts, or receiving preferential access to trial sites, data or infrastructure.
- Require transparent tendering for CPO access, with publication of selection criteria, site bundles, lease terms and unsuccessful site categories.
- Require performance reporting on utilisation, uptime, pricing, reliability, customer outcomes, CPO participation, complaints, connection timeframes, costs, lease revenue and evidence of any subsequent market entry.
- Require independent audit of cost allocation, procurement, site selection, related-party dealings and compliance with ring-fencing conditions.
- Require a clear exit pathway, including transfer, sale, decommissioning or transition to contestable ownership at the end of the waiver period.
Read our full submission here: Nexa Advisory submission – AER Essential Energy ring-fencing waiver application