Strengthening protections for life support customers 2019

We have made new rules that strengthen and clarify protections for Victorian customers who require life support equipment.

New protections for life support customers

These strengthened protections include:

• life support customers will receive protections once their retailer, distributor or embedded network is made aware of their needs
• energy businesses to provide more comprehensive information to life support customers about their rights, processes and energy businesses’ obligations to them
• customers who require gas to fuel their life support equipment will now receive the same protections as electricity customers
• energy businesses to follow robust processes to have accurate life support registers
• clearer processes from energy businesses when seeking medical confirmation from a customer
• clearer and robust processes to validly deregister a life support customer’s premises

These are in addition to existing critical protections that prevent Victorian life support customers from being disconnected by their energy business and require distributors to notify customers of a planned interruption.

These changes apply to all licensed energy businesses, such as electricity and gas retailers, and distributors as well as those who are exempt from holding an electricity licence such as embedded electricity network sellers and suppliers.

The changes will take effect from early 2020

For electricity distribution businesses and exempt persons, transitional arrangements will commence from 2 January 2020. The full framework for electricity businesses coming into effect from 3 February 2020.

For gas businesses, the transitional arrangements will commence on 3 February 2020. The full framework for gas businesses coming into effect on 1 July 2020.