Victorian Energy Market report 2018-19

We regularly obtain information from energy companies to help us report on the type of electricity and gas offers available to residential and small business customers. We also issued a  formal notice to Victorian electricity retailers requesting they provide data on what their customers paid for electricity since 2017.

This information helps us understand the prices customers are being offered, and how this compares to what they are paying for electricity. It also enables us to understand the types of contracts customers are offered and placed on, including contracts with fixed term periods and contracts with pay on time discounts. This type of data is also particularly relevant to our ongoing function to monitor the competitiveness and efficiency of the Victorian energy retail market.

This section explains the difference between the data we collected and included in this report.

Analysis of what people actually paid for their electricity contracts

We analysed data that we obtained from retailers about the amount Victorian customers paid to their retailers throughout two years, 2017–18 and 2018–19. 

This is the first time we have conducted this type of analysis.

We issued a formal information request to electricity companies. We asked for data about how much customers were paying for their power. We also asked for information to understand the types of contracts they placed customers on.

The retailer data showed that prices remained stable in the 12 months to June 2019 compared to the previous 12 months. Meeting all conditional discounts did not necessarily mean a cheaper electricity bill but missing one or more of the discount conditions was costly. The first half of this section provides an analysis of what people actually paid for their electricity contracts, based on data obtained from retailers via an information notice issued under section 37 of the Essential Services Commission Act 2001. 

Analysis of the electricity and gas offers available in the market at certain times

We regularly analyse the price of energy offers that are published by retailers. These prices are not necessarily what customers are currently paying, but reflect the energy offers that retailers make available for customers to switch to at certain times in the year.

We analyse electricity and gas offers published by retailers on the Victorian Energy Compare website, particularly those available at 30 June each year. 

We apply these offers to estimate what a typical residential and small business customer might use each year, if they were on these published offers. For residential customers, we assume a typical customer might use 4,000 kWh of electricity and 54.4 GJ of gas each year. For small business customers, we assume a typical customer might use 12,000 kWh or 500 GJ of gas each year.

The second half of this section provides an analysis of offers available and published by retailers on the Victorian Energy Compare website.