On 28 April 2015, the Queensland Government announced that it would hold off on implementing part of the NECF known as the "market monitoring regime" in South East Queensland. See our previous alert setting out the impacts of that policy change.
The Queensland Government has now taken the formal step to delay the commencement of retail electricity price deregulation in South East Queensland until 1 July 2016. This was achieved through the Electricity Competition and Protection Legislation Amendment (Postponement) Regulation 2015 and the proclamation of 4 June 2015. That proclamation excludes certain sections of the Electricity Competition and Protection Legislation Amendment Act 2014 from commencing on 1 July this year.
Delaying of price deregulation has unintended impacts on the solar feed-in tariff. These impacts are addressed in the National Energy Retail Law (Queensland) (Transitional) Regulation 2015. The transitional regulation preserves the current legislative approach to the solar feed-in tariff by prescribing the retail entities that are required to pay the regulated feed-in tariff to eligible solar customers. Those retail entities are Ergon Energy and Origin Energy (in respect of a small area near Goondiwindi).
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