At Senate Estimates I asked the Australian Energy Regulator if they were concerned that there seems to be increasing control over people’s electricity and access to electricity. It seems to be a case of “see no evil” at the Energy Regulator after hundreds of thousands of Queenslanders had their air-cons remotely throttled by the Government.
As the grid gets more unstable because of net-zero policies the government needs more control over electricity use to avoid damage to infrastructure.
One Nation will oppose this WEF inspired control dystopia at every turn.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing again today. I have a question about the emergency backstop mechanism from the Queensland government’s Department of Energy and Climate. It’s implemented in Queensland and it allows the government to turn off people’s solar panels at will. A lot of people in Queensland were shocked when the government reached into their homes and controlled their air conditioning units 170,000 times in the last two months. Now we’re finding out the government can turn off people’s solar panels as well. I don’t understand why the panels on someone’s house would have to be remotely cut off, even for self-consumption. As the regulator, do you have any data on how many of these generation signalling devices have been installed in Queensland under this emergency backstop mechanism and how many are installed nationally?
Ms Savage : Is your question about smart inverters?
Senator ROBERTS: It’s about smart meters that are cutting off air conditioning units and cutting off solar panels.
Ms Savage : There is a backstop mechanism that’s been put in place through the Energy and Climate Change Ministerial Council, which I don’t know if the department wishes to comment on. Essentially, it’s to avoid situations of what they call minimum demand, where you might have—
Senator ROBERTS: Minimal demand?
Ms Savage : Minimum demand problems. It’s where in system operation you might have so much solar in the system—
Senator ROBERTS: Like the middle of the day.
Ms Savage : That’s right. South Australia is where it’s been most acute. You might have so much that you can’t keep a stable minimum generation load in place. Solar is turned off during those emergency situations to ensure that you can keep that minimum stable generation load. I’m not aware of the figures that you’ve just quoted around the number of times it’s been done in Queensland, so I’ll look to my colleagues, Ms Jolly or Mr Duggan, to see if they can assist.
Mr Duggan : I was going to ask if you could give us a sense of where those figures came from, Senator, because I hadn’t heard them before.
Senator ROBERTS: I can get back to you on that. It was widely reported in the press last week.
Ms Savage : It’s not consistent with my understanding, so I think we’d need to see the figures.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. We’ll get them to you. Under the National Electricity Rules, what remedy or compensation is available to a homeowner if their solar panels are turned off remotely and they suffer some kind of damage because of that?
Ms Savage : Again, it’s not an area of the AER’s responsibility. I’m not sure whether there are compensation payments in place—I don’t think there are.
Mr Duggan : I think having access to the information that you’ve got would help us out enormously, but, to me, the direction of the question is more one that goes to AEMO’s management of the grid. I suspect they would be operating that part of the system. If we can get the information from you, we’ll endeavour to work with those—
Senator ROBERTS: Doesn’t the Australian Energy Regulator oversee the whole lot?
Ms Savage : Yes, but not necessarily the way in which the system is operated, and that’s a system operation question. We make sure people comply with the rules. One of the things the Australian Energy Regulator is doing is working with the network companies to do what’s called flexible export limits. This is to ensure that you have a greater opportunity to optimise the solar system across the whole grid so that we’re not seeing solar panels being turned off unnecessarily. Did you want to add anything, Mr Cox?
Mr Cox : No. I think that’s basically right. At the moment, solar panels, as you mentioned, are turned off to preserve the stability of the grid. It’s a fairly rigid arrangement. Perhaps a more flexible arrangement would allow people to export more frequently at times that are convenient to them, and that’s something we’re exploring with the various network businesses.
Senator ROBERTS: You used the word ‘acute’ and talk about ensuring a stable minimum generation load. These things—solar and wind—have introduced a hell of a lot of management issues, which adds costs and risk to the system.
Ms Savage : I think they add cost and risk at times through the day, but they’re also at times free. From that perspective, we see a lot of negative prices—in South Australia and Queensland, in particular—through the middle of the day, which lowers overall average prices of the system, but at other times of the day there are costs to manage the system. Ms Jolly has just reminded me that we do have the export services network performance report, which looks at how the networks are and how much solar energy is being exported into the grid. That report might be useful to you too.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. Could you send us that, please.
Ms Savage : Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: You may not be able to answer this question, but you’re the overseer. How many air conditioners have been installed with remote demand management systems under the PeakSmart program in Queensland?
Ms Savage : I wouldn’t have access to that data.
Senator ROBERTS: Would you be able to get it on notice?
Ms Savage : I don’t think we would have that as an agency; that sounds like a Queensland government program.
Senator ROBERTS: But you’re overseeing the national.
Ms Savage : We oversee the bits that are within the national electricity law and rules. State based programs usually are done through state based legislation.
Senator ROBERTS: So they can operate independently?
Ms Savage : If the states have their own legislation, there will be elements that will operate through that.
Senator ROBERTS: Are you concerned that there seems to be increasing control over people’s use of electricity and access to electricity?
Ms Savage : In Queensland there has been direct load control of air conditioners and pool pumps for a very long time, for more than 20 years. From that perspective, it is not a new thing in Queensland; it has always been a part of the system operation in Queensland.
Senator ROBERTS: What about other states? Is it increasing?
Ms Savage : We would have to look at the numbers. I don’t have the numbers in front of me.
Senator ROBERTS: Could you get them on notice, please.
Ms Savage : Ms Jolly, would we have those numbers?
Ms Jolly : I’m not sure. They may come from the distributors who run those programs autonomously.
Senator ROBERTS: Do you how many smart meters have been installed in Queensland?
Ms Savage : I probably know how many smart meters there are in Queensland. We are at about 47 per cent in Queensland. Is that right? We’d have to take that on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: If you could, please. Forty-seven per cent of households have smart metres?
Ms Savage : We looked at this last week, so I’m trying to remember what the answer to that is. But I think that we’re heading into that territory in most of the jurisdictions now—up towards the high 40 per cents.
Senator ROBERTS: Is there anything in the National Electricity Rules that enshrines the right of a customer to refuse a smart meter? At the moment many of the programs have opt-out clauses, but my question is whether there is anything in the Electricity Rules that will stop an electricity company if they decide to try to force someone to take a smart meter, to make it mandatory.
Ms Savage : I think I’ll need take that on notice as well.
Senator ROBERTS: It seems like there is increasing power over people’s use of electricity. I’ll just ask a few questions; you may not be able to answer these. It is about the emergency backstop mechanism website. The government says that the emergency backstop mechanism ‘is an important step in supporting Queensland’s transition to a more coordinated electricity system’. Is the electricity system becoming more coordinated, controlled?
Senator McAllister: Senator Roberts, we’ve canvassed this a few times over the course of the day. It’s very difficult for officials to answer questions about documents when we don’t know the provenance of the documents or the dates they were published or we don’t have the document in front of us. Are you able to table that or perhaps provide us with a web link?
Senator ROBERTS: Sure. It was a website, last updated 12 December 2023, from the Department of Energy and Climate in the Queensland government.
Senator McAllister: I see. So it’s a Queensland government—
Senator ROBERTS: Yes.
Senator McAllister: I’m not sure that the Commonwealth government can answer questions about Queensland government programs. The AER may have information for you, but there are limits on what we can discuss in this forum.
Senator ROBERTS: I understand that, Minister. I’m just looking at what the Queensland government is saying about the ‘more coordinated electricity system’ and I thought that that might come under the Australian Energy Regulator.
Ms Savage : I would probably say that an electricity system must be coordinated—it has always been coordinated—because you have to have instantaneous meeting of supply and demand. That’s why you have a system operator to make sure that you’ve got generation resources available when people demand it. That level of coordination is fundamental to ensuring that we can keep a stable voltage waveform in the system. The physics of that demands it. To answer your question, it has always been a coordinated system and it will need to be remain a coordinated system.
Senator ROBERTS: It says it’s becoming ‘more coordinated’.
CHAIR: On this notion of the national energy grid and the role of the states, I think what we’re probably tripping over here is the situation where there is a national plan and the states each have a set of responsibilities. How they then roll out those responsibilities is sometimes done in the state and not necessarily part of the purview of—
Senator ROBERTS: I understand that. I’m trying to find out whether or not you have any role in that or any information about that.
Ms Savage : I’m happy to try and answer your questions. They’re just not necessarily directly in my patch, but I’ll help you however I can.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s about all I had. You’ve already answered the last one I had.
