We regularly monitor and report on how well energy licensees are complying with their regulatory requirements.
Electricity and gas compliance and auditing activities
Overview
We regularly monitor and report on how well energy licensees are aligning with their regulatory obligations through:
- 'baseline' reviews, where we audit businesses on a suite of basic requirements
- 'targeted reviews', where we select businesses for additional auditing in certain areas
- distributor audits, where we make sure distributors supply critical services that help support customers.
Where applicable, we will also work directly with certain licensees to address specific or unusual issues.
All of this work helps ensure our performance reports, including our Victorian Energy Market Report, remains a valuable way for customers to better understand how the energy retail market works, and what they need to do to get the best out of it.
Our auditing priorities and program
Featured work
COVID-19 website review
In 2020, we did a sweep of 14 retailers’ websites to check that they were providing information about the help available during COVID-19 and also checked that their family violence policy and complaint processes were accurate and helpful.
Key findings
Overall, the information about the help available during COVID-19 was prominent and easy to find on most of the retailers’ websites. We worked with two retailers to improve the information about COVID-19 assistance on their websites.
Additionally, all websites contained a good level of detail regarding their complaints processes and Family Violence policy. We worked with one retailer to add a list of external family violence support services on their website.
Recent compliance and auditing activities
After penalising 1st Energy in 2019, we followed up with an audit to re-examine their understanding of what it means to obtain explicit informed consent from a customer before transferring them.
(, )
We required all five Victorian electricity distributors to undergo independent audits to check whether they complied with the smart meter regulatory framework.
(, )
We audit energy businesses to help us understand how energy businesses are complying with rules designed to protect consumers. If we detect problems through our audit program, we can investigate further and may take enforcement action.
(, )
In 2019, we audited two energy distribution businesses for the second time: AusNet Services and Jemena Electricity Networks.
(, )
We audited retailer’s websites to ensure they were providing information about their customer’s entitlements to assistance.
(, )