The Grid of the Future: Aligning Incentives and Flexibility

As tariffs become more complex, is there a better way to enable flexibility? We'll also look at how aligning incentives for network businesses is crucial for a faster, fairer energy transition and why regulatory reform is needed to make this happen. Plus, can the shift from traditional networks to a more dynamic community-focused grid truly benefit everyone without driving up costs?

Stay tuned as we unpack the grid of the future.

All right, to kick things off, let's hear from each of you. Gavin, we hear in the news about customer confusion about ever increasingly complex tariffs.

Is this just going to get worse or what does the future hold?

[Gavin Dufty] (2:10 - 3:13)

No, it's not going to get worse. There are current moves by the Australian Energy Market Commissioner, the rule maker in the system, which has got a work program that will hopefully sort these things out by 2026. A lot of the issues that people are facing now is they're moving from a flat linear price.

So the more you use, the more you pay and the price doesn't change based on when you consume. As energy networks like Ausgrid start to put in smart meters and get better line of sight about the true costs for the use of the grid, they're putting new pricing frameworks up. The retailers have not been doing such a fabulous job in managing that and they've just been passing those quite complicated and complex tariffs straight through to households, often with no warning about the reassignments to those new pricing structures.

That's had lots of pushbacks. And as I said, there's moves afoot to sort this out.

[Sarah Aubrey] (3:13 - 3:22)

There does seem to be a lot of confusion. People don't even know what tariff they're on. Some people are on a demand tariff, some people are on time-of-use and they do seem to be awfully confused about it.

[Gavin Dufty] (3:22 - 3:53)

Yeah, and there's no education around it by the retailers about, well, what does it mean? How can you optimise your position with those? What are the alternatives?

Yada, yada, yada. So people are sort of being shifted into a new system, unprepared, unsupported, and probably there isn't the wraparound tools to help them better engage in that new system. And that's where, you know, things like Ausgrid and DSOs and all those other things we'll talk about come into the frame.

[Sarah Aubrey] (3:53 - 4:17)

So this podcast is all about a faster, fairer, lower cost transition. How does this concept of a future grid or moving from a distribution network service provider or a DNSP to a distribution system operator or a DSO, how does that deliver benefits for the broader community? And what are those two things first and foremost?

[Alida Jansen van Vuuren] (4:17 - 6:27)

Yes, yes. So first of all, we are moving from a four-letter acronym to a three letter, so we've progressed. But no, so DNSP is what the distribution network service provider is, what we've traditionally done as networks, which is to build, maintain, operate the distribution network.

And the idea of distribution system operator actually comes from the UK. And there's this idea where if we can, in addition to that, think about the way that customers use our network and how we can support the energy transition and use customer flexibility and support customer flexibility, we can get a more efficient system. So in particular, what that could look like, for example, is if we look at our connections process, increasingly we're seeing customers connect with more flexibility than what they've had in the past.

And so instead of just giving them one option in how they connect, we can give them a few options. So an example in London is when the buses in London were electrifying, UK power networks agreed with them that if they charge during certain times of the day that they could connect and start charging without having to upgrade the network. And similarly, we're looking at those sort of arrangements for larger battery storage connecting to our grid as well, because we know storage is flexible.

So instead of having our traditional approaches of saying if you connect, you have to upgrade to support your capacity. How can we get these things into the network and provide them with a more flexible agreement of how they use the network? So that use of customer flexibility and support of customer flexibility is what a distribution system operator does.

But it doesn't mean anything until it actually gets embedded into the network, until it changes how our operation room works and changes how we plan for the network and what our engineers do. So it's really all of business transformation in how we think about the services we provide customers and how we use and support customer flexibility. And part of that is very much tariff reform and pricing reform and looking at the incentives structures that we create for customers that use the network.

[Sarah Aubrey] (6:27 - 6:32)

So when you say customer flexibility, do you actually mean behaviour, shifting behaviour?

[Alida Jansen van Vuuren] (6:32 - 7:27)

Yeah, that's a really good question. So flexibility is really any flexibility a customer has in when they use or produce electricity. And that flexibility can definitely come from behaviour changes.

But increasingly we see that because we are moving to a digitalised world where we have more smarts going into people's homes, that that's automation or that's technology providing that option for customers. And of course, it's not just residential customers very much on the larger end of the scale. Our customers are getting quite sophisticated with a lot of data centres connecting, for instance, and electricity is one of the biggest parts of their cost tax.

So being smart in how they use electricity. All of them also actually have backup power for themselves. So being able to start using those systems to provide services to the system is what we're talking about.

[Sarah Aubrey] (7:28 - 7:47)

Interesting. Are you ready for another question? Actually, I have a question here for you, Gavin.

So this idea has been thrown around in the industry for a while now. Why do you think this hasn't actually happened or is it happening somewhere?

[Gavin Dufty] (7:49 - 9:18)

It's a system in transition. And again, we need the moving from an analogue system to a digital system, you actually need to digitise everything. So we're in the process of that.

And that's where smart meters are coming along to do that. As Alida said, there needs to be a whole lot of backends behind that new ICT systems and all that sort of stuff. And at the same time, we've got the old coal-based top-down coming to us, production, they produce it, we consume it, to more of a distributed energy flows where I produce it and somebody around the corner consumes it and vice versa.

So that system's in change. And until you tip one way, or until we tip the way of a distribution system, you probably really don't have the economies of scales to bring it large, bring it to town, have a communal narrative so everybody can participate. At the moment, you've probably only got about 35-40% smart meter to uptake.

It mainly comes with people with new kit like solar and all that. So they're all digitised up, but we need the houses without the solar, the ones that are consuming the energy to link them in. So we're going from a vertically top-down, big stuff to people like me, to street to street, neighbourhood to neighbourhood, hood flows.

We're really close, it'll happen in the next five years, what we will pivot across.

[Sarah Aubrey] (9:19 - 9:20)

Do you think batteries are key to that?

[Gavin Dufty] (9:22 - 10:05)

For me, I think it's about consumption. Batteries are technology. I don't like talking about a particular technology because it does speak to a particular group of people.

Everybody can participate in this. Storage hot water, it's a battery, it's storing hot water. Being able to switch and move around pool pumps, that's great too.

Being able to switch washing machines on to the middle of the day or dishwashers to the middle of the day, there's simple things that people can do that consume energy at the time when it's abundant, when all the sun's shining and we're awash with rooftop solar. So it's not just for new tech. Old tech and old kit is really important here.

That's huge opportunities for renters out there and people that don't have a lot of cash in their pocket.

[Sarah Aubrey] (10:05 - 10:08)

Can't take advantage of those things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Fairness.

[Gavin Dufty] (10:09 - 10:29)

Yeah, and everybody has an opportunity here. I think that's a beautiful thing about the new system is consumption's just as important as production. Otherwise, we spill it and it just gets wasted.

The wholesale market now in every other state except for New South Wales is negative. Theoretically, they'd pay you to consume at the moment because we've got too much of it.

[Sarah Aubrey] (10:30 - 10:42)

The idea of that is just crazy, isn't it? I think consumers would be pretty excited about becoming their own little power plant and taking advantage of that. Do you not think?

Or do you think people don't care?

[Alida Jansen van Vuuren] (10:43 - 13:07)

Some. I think consumers like you would be excited about it.

And I think that's the reality is that we do have to think of the breadth of consumer preferences in this as well rather than just designed for the energy nerds like us. But it's interesting what you were saying, Gavin, about it being a system in change. I think it's not just that the technology has to catch up or the systems have to catch up.

We didn't design the whole social construct around energy with this in mind. We never thought that customers or people would generate their own electricity. How could that happen, right?

So it means the way the industry is structured, everything needs to change. All the policy and the way they think about electricity needs to change as well. So I think that's why it's such a challenging thing to do.

And it was actually in customers' interest that we decided to just have a very simple product that's flat tariff. Don't have to think about it. We'd make it as cheap as possible.

And that's all. Because having cheap prices was the only objective we had in society at the time. We put the system together.

And we also disaggregated the whole energy system as a result to get specialisation in each part of the system to reduce cost. And now trying to do that collaboration across that is becoming really, really complicated. And why it's so important for us to be partnering with people in these solutions.

And Gavin's talked a lot about retailers. And I think that relationship between network businesses and retailers and how we develop products and services for customers and package it up and think about it is becoming really important. We have, I guess, a bit of a legacy of sort of chucking things over the wall, you know, and someone else has to deal with it.

But I don't think we can do that anymore. If you look at the tariff issue that recently, you know, we've seen retailers assigning customers to these complex tariffs without giving them the information or the notice. But that impacts the whole industry.

It dribbles through all of us. And so increasingly collaborating and understanding that we're in this together and we need to work on solutions together is going to be really, really important.

[Sarah Aubrey] (13:08 - 13:14)

So do you think there are alternatives to tariffs to incentivising customer flexibility? Like what are the real options?

[Alida Jansen van Vuuren] (13:15 - 15:06)

Yeah, that's a good question. So I think, first of all, that tariffs, network tariffs and the wholesale market is complex and will probably continue to be more complex. And you need that variability in a marketplace or in tariffs that are signalling how much capacity is available in the network to create opportunities for solutions to come in and make money from it.

So that's how battery storage or electric vehicles, smart charging has a business case, right? It's because there is variation in that incentives. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the customer has to be exposed to the wholesale market or has to be exposed to the network tariff.

There are options in how that's packaged up. And that's really the role of the retailer. It has traditionally been and increasingly is going to continue to be.

And solution providers like virtual power plant aggregators and things as well is to be able to package those things up and bring it to a customer and offer them something that makes sense to them, that's simple enough. And I think that's increasingly an important part of the system. So I think to think about whether network tariffs should be different or not is not really the right place.

It's more, what is the customer seeing? And so we see retailers offering customers rebates, for instance, for example. So if you reduce, you know, send out text messages to reduce your power during peak times, we give you a rebate or some bull credit.

[Sarah Aubrey]

So you're incentivising people.

[Alida Jansen van Vuuren]

Yeah, exactly. So, but what's happening in the background is way more complicated than that, right?

So, and that, but the customer doesn't necessarily have to see all of that. So if you think of the network as the transport company and then the generators, including customer generation as, you know, the producers of the supply of the things that are being sold, how all of that comes together is really, you know, the role of the retailer. Wow.

[Sarah Aubrey] (15:06 - 15:27)

It's quite complex. I don't even pretend to understand it. So how can we create the right incentives for network businesses to support the energy transition while keeping customer costs under control?

And I'd love to hear from each of you about what you think is the most important factor in achieving this balance. I'll start with you, Gavin.

[Gavin Dufty] (15:29 - 18:38)

Optionality. People, communities all have different agency and they, and through lifestyles and lifecycles, you all have different agencies. So to me, I think it's about creating as many front doors for people to walk through so they can choose their own energy adventure.

So I'm thinking, and this is where networks are really important. Networks provide the foundations for those doors. So, you know, and it starts simply as things like appliance standards.

So standards, if we get standards that have got built-in smarts, well, that's great. We don't have to think about that. Having the right information out there is really important, which would be the next one.

How do we get the right narrative that says, off peaks in the middle of the day, people, it's not at night time anymore. And we just get getting that right. And the next bit would be, well, how do you have connection agreements?

So for EV is really a good example. How do you bolt on? So it's a set and forget, and EVs charge up when there's abundance, not when there's constraints.

And then you have tariffs. Tariffs are market-making platforms. They're not about passing costs through necessarily.

They're about providing a price difference that people can make investments around. Now that could be behind the meter investments. It could be third-party investments.

It could be retailer investments. And then you'll go up controllability of connection points. We'll control it.

If you plug in this way, we'll control your hot water. Then you get a little bit more sophisticated with the smarts come in. If you want to hand over total control, we'll arbitrage that around and maybe give you a rebate.

I think we also need to look, and I come back to the complementary measures. There's a lot of subsidy going to asset-rich people. You've got to have a house to have a battery.

You've got to own your own home to have a solar system. And then those costs are socialised on energy consumption. So I've got solar that was paid by the community, but I don't actually pay back the cost of my solar.

Other people do that are renters. So you've got these quite inequitable historical structures around how subsidies are funded and who pays for those funding. So we need to have a look at that.

We also need to have a look at concessions, supports for people that are poor and vulnerable, about what sort of concessional arrangements and supports are best suited for the new energy system. And those two things are the shock absorbers. So we could go through change, but you've got to get the shock absorbers right.

Otherwise change can be incredibly bumpy. And we know with the energy system, once you get really bumpy change, the energy walls bake out again and we all slip backwards. So I think getting those complementary measures, concessions, green schemes funding and allocations, the consumer protection framework's right, means that we can actually push quicker and move quicker because we've got all the balancing mechanisms in place.

And that they do need work at the moment because the industry is moving ahead really fast, but governments are sort of moving a little bit slower in that space about, well, how do we get ahead of the game rather than be reactive?

[Sarah Aubrey] (18:38 - 18:49)

How do you feel customers, how do they respond to the idea of energy retailers that control or the network controlling what you have in your house? What's the kind of feel to that?

[Gavin Dufty] (18:49 - 19:32)

I think there's three things that the industry and everybody needs to work on. The first one is trust. To do that, trust, yeah, the hot water's going to be there when I need it, or the pool pump's going to work and keep the pool clean when I need it, whatever you're cycling.

So that's the first one. Value. We need to talk about the value proposition.

What is the value? Because at the moment we're just talking cost. Why?

Why are you just pushing a cost through to me? Well, the value of this cost releases this agency and options for you. So we need to talk about those sorts of things.

So the whole narrative has to move from this linear analogue to this digital conversation about, look at the value that you can individually extract or create, but as a society, look at the value we all get if we all play this way.

[Alida Jansen van Vuuren] (19:33 - 20:47)

Yeah, it's interesting. What research tells us is that we talk to customers and we say to them, I will only use your battery if it's a system emergency. And the initial reaction customers have is like, no, I have a battery to protect myself against system emergencies.

That's the time I want you to leave it alone. What are you talking about? So we don't use the right language in some of the ways that we express it.

So for us, that's like, oh, that doesn't happen very often. So that's good. That's good value.

You get good money for it. We don't interfere very often. But customers are like, no, that's not what I want you to do.

Some interesting research around virtual power plants also have shown that we keep having this industry idea of that we just need to make it simple. If we can just explain the value, just explain the proposition in simple terms, then customers will understand it and they can buy into it and we can get informed consent. But it makes people suspicious if it's too simple, that it's too good to be true, or what are you hiding?

So actually having a very simple narrative for a virtual power plant tends to make people suspicious of what it is you're not telling them.

[Sarah Aubrey] (20:47 - 20:57)

Do you feel like people, because they've made this big capital investment in their battery, that they're not being rewarded enough, potentially, if they are taking part in something like that?

[Alida Jansen van Vuuren] (20:59 - 21:03)

So this is interesting. Where do we start with that?

[Gavin Dufty] (21:03 - 23:21)

I think the conversation here is hedged between two paradigms. And that's where the challenge is. One is you're talking about a financial exchange.

And I think that we need to move on from that, because that is the old analogue way. I think we need to move to services. It says, look, if you give us controllability of the battery, we'll guarantee you all these services that you want to do with whatever you want.

And if you give us this control, it gives us the ability to create these services for other people, and we can reward you back for the exchange of services. So I look at the network and I think that could be the eHarmony, the Tinder, the Grindr, whatever your thing is. It's about we're all going to swipe right.

Generation needs load. My ex-book, because I'm a solo household, it needs somewhere to go. And the network is the platform that enables those matches to be made.

Now, the network could do the matchmaking themselves and provide the services, could be the retailer, could be third parties, could be electric vehicle leasing people will do it. So just conceptualising it different about exchanging services, you've got generation, I've got load, rather than, ah, here's a kilowatt, take a kilowatt, and what do I get paid for my kilowatt? It just lifts it up to next level for me and talks about a distributed, shared, communal type arrangement.

Nobody should be left behind. There's opportunities for everybody here. And the conversation does get captured by technology.

And I fall into the trap of that. And we've done it here, batteries and EVs and all that. What we really need to make sure is, will this work for the average cooktop?

Will this work for the air conditioner at home? Will this work for people watching television? And the answer is yes.

But we've got to talk to them and say, this is for you too. It's not just for people with batteries and electric vehicles and solar systems. This is for everybody.

And that's a system that I think everybody can lean into. Otherwise, you've got a situation now where people say, oh, no, the new system's not for me. I don't have solar.

I say, well, no, no, no, I need your consumption for my solar. So again, I come back to the Tinder, eHarmony, Grindr analogy. We all need each other to make this work.

And old tech is just as good as new tech.

[Sarah Aubrey] (23:21 - 23:40)

I think people would hate the idea or probably just don't realise how much energy is wasted in the middle of the day. That's just so crazy. I think if people knew that that was harnessed in some way and be able to be used, and that we were getting to use that then when we need it most, when we all come home from work and we turn everything on, I think people would be much happier with that.

[Alida Jansen van Vuuren] (23:40 - 24:52)

Yeah. And it's because I think our paradigm's shifting. We're moving to a period of abundance.

People look at the fact that the electricity price is negative in the middle of the day and go, well, clearly we have too much generation in the middle of the day. But actually, we need an abundance of renewable energy because there are times when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow. And so you have an abundance and that's a good thing.

And it's finding ways of utilising that well and doing something like actually making the price negative in the middle of the day gives retailers, for example, the incentive to talk to their customers about consuming energy in the middle of the day. But you're right. And I think that narrative, having a real conversation with the public about what is happening in the transition is important.

So we, I think we've just simplified it down to, you know, solar is good and cheap and that's it. That's the whole, that's the full answer. And that's been reiterated through government incentives and all these various programs since we don't really have a nuanced conversation.

[Sarah Aubrey] (24:53 - 25:03)

We're just about to obviously get a rebate for batteries in New South Wales. How's that going to go for Ausgrid in terms of excited about potentially then a lot more batteries on people's walls?

[Alida Jansen van Vuuren] (25:04 - 25:50)

Yes. I think it's definitely starting to shift the incentives towards the kind of things that we need, which is flexibility, right? So we need to be able to shift and have more intelligent technology that helps with that.

I think I'm with Gavin though, and I'll almost go one step further, which is to say it's not just about batteries. Batteries is one technology. We actually, as a society, it's about changing the way we use electricity.

And that means changing our industries and everything, because we are moving to this world of abundance in the middle of the day. So how can we start doing some of that shifting? And how can we start thinking about off peak as being in the middle of the day, just like you would turn on your washing machine to run overnight, historically, how do we start doing that stuff during the day?

[Sarah Aubrey] (25:50 - 26:03)

And let's say, for example, I need to, because I don't have a driveway with a public charger. Do you think public chargers would start doing that in the day, giving you a cheaper price in the middle of the day to recharge your vehicle?

[Alida Jansen van Vuuren] (26:03 - 26:34)

I think, yeah, exactly. So and it's not that hard to imagine, right? Because if you think of petrol stations today, they will have, every time you drive past, there's a different price on there.

And we don't think of that as an odd thing, right? So being exposed to that sort of incentive is quite natural for us anyway. So yeah, I think that's what will happen is that you'll have apps where you're, you know, notified of what a cheap time is to charge or, you know, different public charging infrastructure, advertising, pricing at different times of the day.

[Sarah Aubrey] (26:34 - 26:39)

So Alida, do you think there needs to be regulatory reform in this area?

[Alida Jansen van Vuuren] (26:40 - 29:33)

Yeah, that's a good, that's a very good question. So the, what's interesting about what I'm talking about when I talk about a DSO is that if you, if you do it well, if you incentivise it well, you end up reducing the need to build more network, right? You use what you, what we have well and get lower costs.

But as networks, we predominantly make money through building network. So that's, so it's a really difficult, and I mean, that's of course not the only incentive we have on us, but that is a strong incentive is that traditionally the role of the network was to build up a network. And so the whole framework is set up on how do we do that efficiently and how do we have the right incentives to build out the network and have that investment coming in.

So to move to this world of customer flexibility, I think we have to look at the incentives that are in networks and how do we start incentivising networks to make more use of existing network. And that could even be as simple as things like an incentive framework for the amount of renewables that we connect. So you've got a baseline of how much you expect, and then if networks can connect more, then, you know, there's an incentive for doing that because then that will make us do things like actually start talking to commercial or industry places and saying they can't, you know, let's put some more solar on your roof and do all this stuff and push that forward.

So I think that's key is to look at the incentive framework. And then I also think the lines between what the role of the network is and what, you know, the role of different people within that supply chain is becoming blurry. And we do see an increased appetite from the regulator to test new models and try new things.

But it's a new shift, I would say. And, you know, for instance, I think about our community battery program that we run at Ausgrid, which has been has probably been going for about five years. And it's now that there's starting to be that support for it.

But it was a hard slog in the beginning, you know, because it was just a very black and white, that's not a thing that networks do. And now we're having that same conversation around electric vehicle charging and public charging infrastructure and how networks can support some of that. And so I think that conversation is changing, but there is still this quite reasonable concern that all networks want to do is build out the network or build out our assets, because that is the incentive that's on us.

So let's look at that. Let's actually say, what does that need to look like for us to play a real part in the energy transition? How do we incentivise networks to become DSOs, to become flexible, you know, the supporters of customer flexibility and make use of the network well?

[Sarah Aubrey]

What do you think of that, Gavin?

[Gavin Dufty] (29:35 - 31:52)

Oh, doing nothing is not an option. Doing nothing, sitting still, the system will break. And, you know, there'll be outages and a whole lot of other things.

So there'll be only bad outcomes. So yeah, there needs to be lots of reform, and we need to do a lot of it really quickly. And we need to get it right first time, because if we mess it up, you can really slow it down.

Not only do there needs to be a look at incentives for networks to be efficient and get lowest cost possible, and trust and build trust and products and services, probably need to look at the consumer protection framework. I mean, at the moment, there's this thing called the National Energy Consumer Framework, only applies to the consumption of electricity. But if you electrify everything, you sort of ask yourself, should transport cars have the same protection as hot water and cooking?

And you sort of go, oh, how essential is that? Essential-ish? I don't know.

So you've got this collision between the energy consumer protections and broader consumer law, and they're sort of colliding in together. So we've got to work that out. You've got complementary measures will all have to be looked at.

So the subsidies and concessions. So you get energy concessions and there's green seams, subsidies. So I've got solar.

Other people paid for that. So I'm getting the benefit. Maybe society isn't.

So how are they funded and who pays for them? And where's the return back to the community? And then you've got a whole lot of other issues about how does the market operator, an EMO market operator, reach into the distribution network?

And should it have more hierarchy in the scheme of things to switch on and off my appliances, or should that be a job for the distribution operator? So there's all this sort of architecture that really needs to be worked on quickly to make sure that we can onboard things as smoothly as possible. Because if it's not smooth and we have bad outcomes, it will slow down the transition.

It will end up costing us all more and we won't get the emissions reductions that we need as quickly as we can. So, yeah, we do need change and we all need to work really hard to make sure it's the right change as speedy as possible.

[Sarah Aubrey] (31:52 - 32:17)

We need to bring the community with us.

[Alida Jansen van Vuuren]

We have really managed to make it quite complicated, haven't we?

[Sarah Aubrey]

And does each distributor work do a different thing?

Like, are you all kind of doing different stuff or are you all kind of working cohesively on one idea and sort of trying to, even though it is obviously very complex, but are you all separate things in terms of the direction you're heading in?

[Alida Jansen van Vuuren] (32:18 - 34:14)

Yeah, it's a good question. There's actually quite a lot of alignment across Australia in this space across the network. So we've actively been collaborating on this.

We've certainly been pushed by customer advocates such as Gavin as well to do that. And increasingly, the things that are impacting one state is also impacting another state. So it makes sense.

We certainly, or I certainly take an approach of if someone else in Australia has done it, well, let's just copy it. So I think of a lot of the work that South Australia has done, or SAP Analytics has done on integrating rooftop solar, and we're just copying and pasting and using the same thing. I think we can do more.

We certainly are doing more, particularly around interoperability and standards, and really pushing for that and starting to make sure that, for instance, the way that we as a network communicate with customers or with solution providers is the same standard to make it easier. So you don't have to have a different device depending on which state you're in or which network you're connected to, and really getting to that interoperable plug and play future that we envision. Because we just have to.

There's, I think, 15 or so of us in Australia. So we have to do that. And increasingly, we have been doing that.

The important thing, I think, is making the way that we interface quite similar. But then what happens behind the scenes, as in how our network models work or how we calculate pricing and things is quite different, depending on that network's ability or where they're at in their journey. So we don't, for instance, at Ausgrid need the same level of sophistication for solar management as they do in South Australia, where literally the state is feeding the other states in the middle of the day pretty much every day.

So we don't need that level of sophistication, but we still use exactly the same interfaces. And that's important.

[Sarah Aubrey] (34:15 - 34:32)

Wow. Okay. All right.

So we've covered some key points. Let's discuss how we turn the grid of the future from just a network project into an industry-wide solution. What do you think needs to change?

What's your take? I'll start with you, Gavin.

[Gavin Dufty] (34:34 - 36:03)

The interface with customers. Basically, let all the magic happen behind it. So for me, the dream would be able to have everybody gets offered a simple service for a simple price.

So that's what you sign up to when you get your electricity service. A bit like insurance. They look at you and say, oh, it's $1,200 a year for you, flat price fixed, 100 bucks a month.

Off you go, and that's it. And then from that, from that simple service for a simple price, other offerings could come and say, well, if you give us control of your hot water system or your pool pump, or let us charge your electric vehicle, or let us switch on and off your solar system, we're going to give you a different price, but you'll still get the same service. So it's sort of like moving, and I'm showing my age here, moving from local calls and STD calls, which we used to have, and now I've just got a data package.

I'm paying a simple service for a simple price and I get to choose my own adventure. So for me, I think the electricity system in the industry needs to arrive at that destination. And that's what consumers are offered.

And all the magic happens behind the scenes through the smart meters and the digitisation and smart people like Alida and all the other ones can do their magic. But for me, my consumer experience is, I see the value in it. It's affordable and we all get to decarbonise quicker.

It's a different value proposition than here's kilowatts at this price between this time of day, which changes to a different price at another time of day. Do my head in, let alone everybody else's.

[Sarah Aubrey]

What about you Alida?

[Alida Jansen van Vuuren] (36:05 - 37:53)

No, I think, I think that's right. To get that customer interface right, I think there's clearly a technology piece here, right?

So how do we get standardisation? How do we get ubiquitous technology that helps with this and get all those frameworks right? But there's also a change in mind shift in the industry around collaboration and that we're all like in the same boat.

So I think that ongoing collaboration is needed, the continued alignment as well between networks. And then we just need policy stability, but not just the sort of public policy positions, but also behind the scenes. How do we get really fast decisions made through parliament or through various mechanisms?

Because we've talked about this for a while, so it's time for decisions and it's not going to be right. Uh, and I think we need to be more comfortable with being wrong and making mistakes and trying things and learning from it.

[Sarah Aubrey]

Actually trying things and doing, we've just been stuck for so long, haven't we?

Exactly. So, and I can see that changing. Um, and certainly, uh, there's, there's some really good, good, good noises that have been coming out of Canberra and also New South Wales government just released their, their customer energy strategy, which is, which they wrote in customer language and it's really starting to make some strides.

But it's still a bit of a plan for a plan. So, um, I think that that's going to be key. Uh, the technology will happen, right?

And it is happening. Um, and you can get tripped up on that very easily. So we do not need to, we need to keep an eye on that, but it is that, that real shift in the industry and how we collaborate and our, and our pace of change, like what pace of change do we accept as being acceptable.

[Sarah Aubrey]

And you'd like to see things move quicker.

[Alida Jansen van Vuuren] (37:53 - 38:40)

Yes. Short answer. That's right.

[Sarah Aubrey] (37:53 - 38:40)

Well, we've got very smart people talking and thinking about those things, which is great. Um, I'd love to thank you both for your time today. It was incredibly insightful and I learned lots.

So thank you so much for that.

Join us next time as we unpack the pace of change in Australia's renewable energy journey. We'll explore how we can get renewables into the grid faster, the roles of local solutions versus large scale generation and strategies to leverage existing resources.

Don't miss this deep dive into accelerating renewables. For more info on today's episode, visit www.wiredforgood.com.au. Don't forget to follow us on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple podcasts. So you never miss an episode.