PowerBill

National Energy Retail Amendment Rule 2014 No. 2
National Energy Retail Amendment (Customer access to information about their energy consumption)
Rule 2014 No. 2
15.2A Access to information – electricity only
Upon request, we must give you information about your energy consumption or our charges for customer connection services for up to 2 years free of charge. We may charge you a reasonable fee for information
requested;
(a) more than 4 times in the previous 12 months; or
(b) that is different in manner and form to any minimum requirements
we are required to meet; or
(c) by a representative you have authorised to act on your behalf, and that request is part of a request the representative makes to us in relation to more than one customer.

*From Smart Meters (Type 4 and 5) that produce the nem12 & nem13 file format specification (which is a csv file of 51 Columns).
*This data holds importance for many reasons, chiefly as it is a “Gold standard” and core ingredient to calculating the correct bill charges.

Meaning you have the rights to that data right now – it cannot be withheld.

Due to its importance to consumer rights and obligations, enforcing consumer Real-Time Access to meter data is currently under consideration by the Regulator (AER).

Access to Real Time Data

https://www.aemc.gov.au/rule-changes/real-time-data-consumers

Vitally important to accurate billing, is the ‘actual’ meter read data, where the meter reads are performed on a quarterly basis and the data provided by some retailers as a downloadable csv file through their customer portals.

Billing

Estimate bill cycles (Estimate-Estimate-Actual) – where ‘actualisation events’ should occur on every 3rd month and the account is evened out/balanced to zero, so any over-payments or under-payments are redressed and the consumer only pays for what they have used. (‘Actual’ usage equals actual payments made).

Actual bill cycles – where ‘actualisation events’ should occur as a matter of fact every 2 or 3 months, (whenever the actual read is done).

*Consumers are advised to check their bill accurately records their breakdown of usage no matter the billing cycle, so the charges applied are accurate (particularly those on Time-of-Use plans which can be notably troublesome).