Consultations

We have published a consultation paper that proposes to amend the Code to alter the manner in which the system operator and other market operation service providers perform their roles.

The proposed amendments include a requirement for the market operation service providers to perform their roles in a way that is consistent with supporting the Authority to give effect to its statutory objective under the Electricity Industry Act 2010. The proposed amendments also extend to all of the system operator’s functions the obligation of the system operator to perform its role to a reasonable and prudent operator standard.

The proposed amendments would contribute to the more efficient provision of market operation and system operator services and are the result of matters identified during negotiation of new market operation service provider agreements.

Due to the Christmas and New Year period we have extended the standard consultation period from six weeks to nine.

Changes to proposed new clause 7.1A

Since issuing the consultation paper, we decided we needed to revise the wording of the proposed new clause 7.1A to deliver the intended policy outlined in the consultation paper. On 12 January 2016, we made the following two changes to proposed new clause 7.1A:

• changed the standard that would apply to the system operator from ‘recognised international best practice’ to ‘recognised international good practice’
• added a new subclause (2) to clarify that the system operator would not breach a principal performance obligation if it complied with the reasonable and prudent obligation under proposed new clause 7.1A(1).

These changes better give effect to the policy intent of proposed clause 7.1A outlined in the consultation paper. The changes also more clearly reflect the Authority’s view that the system operator should not be in breach of a principal performance obligation if it acts as a reasonable and prudent system operator.

An updated version of the consultation paper that includes these revisions together with some added explanation is available below. To show the changes made in the updated version, we have highlighted the added explanation and revised drafting in the consultation paper. We have also double-underlined wording that the revisions add to the proposed new clause 7.1A, and used double strike-through for wording the revisions remove from this clause. If you had already printed the original version of the consultation paper, you will now need to print at least the revised pages 9, 10 and 23 of the updated version of the consultation paper.