Electricity Supply

The New South Wales electricity market helps to provide reliable and competitively priced electricity supplies to New South Wales business customers. In 2007, New South Wales electricity prices for medium users were competitively priced with customers paying an average 17.3 cents per kilowatt hour. New South Wales’ competitive energy prices help to attract a high level of foreign investment into Australia, particularly energy intensive industries, resulting in the creation of jobs and economic growth for the State.

New South Wales boasts reliable, world class electricity networks that include generation, transmission and distribution to industrial and commercial customers. In 2006-07, New South Wales had one of the lowest outage frequencies of all Australian States.

The New South Wales Government is committed to addressing climate change and reaching long term carbon reduction targets. The New South Wales Energy Efficiency Strategy aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from energy consumption and lessen the impact of the global trend of rising energy prices on businesses and the community by reducing energy consumption.

The New South Wales electricity market is changing in support of climate change initiatives. By September 2008, there were 232,235 residential and business GreenPower customers in New South Wales, with 50,900 new customers acquired over the previous 12 months. GreenPower is a national accreditation program that was started and managed by the New South Wales Government.

Average electricity supply reliability and prices, 2007 (1,2)

State/Territory Electricity Medium User (c/kWh) (3)

Avg Customer Outage Frequency (4)

Avg Customer Outage Duration (5)
Western Australia (6) 15.8 3.33 328.63
Queensland 16.3 2.67 290.03
Tasmania 16.9 2.01 200.00
New South Wales (7,8) 17.3 1.86 351.79
Northern Territory 17.5 3.60 191.00
Victoria 17.8 2.32 204.79
South Australia 21.1 1.78 185.40



Footnotes:

1 Interruptions caused by all factors, including natural disasters, transmission failures and third party induced interruptions
2 Prices data is for 2007, outage frequency and duration data is for 2006-07
3 Medium users defined as Business Tariff Customers using >150MWh annually
4 Average measured as interruptions/customer
5 Average measured as minutes/customer/annum
6 Includes the full impact of Cyclone George and Esperance flooding events.
7 NSW data on outage frequency and outage duration is inclusive of data from the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). Data on prices for medium and large users is not inclusive of the ACT.
8 Includes the full impact of a number of significant storm events during the 2006-07 reporting year.

Sources: 'State of the Energy Market', Australian Energy Regulator; 'Comparison of 2008 Australian Standard Energy Prices', Office of the Tasmanian Energy Regulator