An Australian DER Bill of Rights and Responsibilities

TL;DR

This paper proposes a comprehensive 'DER Bill of Rights and Responsibilities' for Australia, aiming to clarify consumer rights and responsibilities amidst increasing distributed energy resources and market changes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework defining consumer rights and responsibilities for DER participation, referencing existing standards and proposing legal enshrinement for future energy systems.

Findings

Current Australian practices breach consumer rights.

Proposed rights support trust and active participation.

Pathway outlined for legal enshrinement of rights.

Abstract

Australia's world-leading penetration of distributed solar photovoltaics (PV) is now impacting power system security and as a result how customers can use and export their own PV-generated energy. Several programs of Australian regulatory reform for distributed energy resources (DER) have emphasised the importance of placing consumers at the centre of any energy transition, but this has occurred against a haphazard backdrop of proposals for solar export taxes, updated inverter standards, and diminishing feed-in-tariffs. Absent from the discussion is a coherent espousal of reasonable consumer expectations with practical technical definitions of how these may be applied. Whilst American legislation has enshrined initial rights to connect PV, they do not consider the evolution of rights in a DER-dominated future. This paper proposes a first attempt at a 'DER Bill of Rights and Responsibilities' for both passive and active participation in energy markets, using Australia as an example jurisdiction. The intent is that clarity on rights to self-consumption and passive participation will support customer trust in the guiderails of active DER integration and control. Guiding principles are presented with practical definitions referencing existing instruments including inverter standards, network connection agreements, the reliability standard, and central ancillary service markets. We highlight how these proposed rights are already being breached regularly in Australia, before outlining a pathway to enshrine them for a DER-dominated future with broad sector endorsement. These questions are critical for Australia to address now; it is likely other countries will be required to do so in the near future.