Electricity Industry Act 2000

Licensees and exempt persons. Every person engaging in generation, transmission, distribution or retail sale must hold a licence (s.16(1)) unless exempted by Order under s.17 or granted a trial waiver (s.16(1)(c)). Retail licences carry the heaviest obligations: standing-offer duties (s.35), feed-in tariff offers (ss.40G, 40FG), disconnection safeguards (Division 5C), hardship policies (Division 6) and compliance-and-enforcement reporting (s.109A). Distribution companies face deemed-distribution-contract obligations (s.40A), life-support notification duties (s.40SH) and advanced-metering rollout requirements. Transmission companies and generation companies are subject to licensing, easement-acquisition powers (ss.86–92) and critical-infrastructure offences (ss.79–80). Offshore wind energy generation companies may be declared by the Minister (s.40SAA) and become subject to Ministerial licence conditions.

Customers. The Act distinguishes several classes:

• Domestic or small business customers (declared by Order under s.35(5)) receive standing-offer protection (s.35) and cooling-off rights.
• Small retail customers (declared under s.7AA) benefit from exit-fee regulation (s.40D), pre-payment meter controls (s.40E) and prohibition on save-and-win-back offers (s.40EA).
• Relevant customers (declared under s.36(3)) have deemed-contract terms that cannot be undercut (s.36).
• Qualifying solar customers and TFiT scheme customers (s.40F) enjoy statutory minimum feed-in credits.
• Life support customers (s.40SA) receive absolute disconnection immunity while registered (s.40SS(a)) and mandatory notification obligations on retailers and exempt sellers (ss.40SG–40SK).
• Customers in financial hardship are protected by mandatory retailer policies (Division 6) and restrictions on disconnection (s.40SS(c)–(d)).

Regulators and Ministers. The Commission is the primary day-to-day regulator, issuing licences, approving policies, determining standing-offer terms, monitoring compliance and publishing annual enforcement reports (s.109A). The Minister retains significant policy levers: tariff Orders (s.13), declaration of customer classes (ss.7AA, 35(5), 36(3)), Ministerial licence conditions (s.33AB), feed-in tariff declarations (ss.40M–40MAB), trial-waiver Orders (s.53) and emergency directions (Part 6 and Part 6AB). The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) and Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) are brought into Victorian processes via consultation and notification obligations (ss.29AA, 29AB, 49C).

Other participants. Exempt electricity sellers (registered in the Register of Exempt Persons under Division 3A), works contractors (Part 5), insolvency officials in RoLR events (s.19(5A)), and public-sector employees authorised for entry (s.93BA) all operate under the statute’s shadow.

The Act therefore touches every participant in the supply chain and every Victorian electricity consumer. Its reach has expanded from the initial cohort of privatised utilities to include community-scale solar participants, innovative trial proponents, offshore wind developers and households dependent on life-support equipment.

Licensee duties. The most important are:

• Standing-offer obligation (s.35): retailers must offer domestic or small business customers tariffs and terms published in the Government Gazette, subject to Commission approval.
• Feed-in tariff obligations (ss.40FF, 40FG, 40G): relevant licensees and small retail licensees must publish and honour premium solar, TFiT or general renewable-energy feed-in terms.
• Disconnection duties (Division 5C): retailers and exempt sellers may disconnect only on permitted grounds, only after prescribed notices, never during protected periods, and never if a life-support customer is registered (s.40SS).
• Hardship policy (s.43): retailers must maintain an approved policy containing flexible payments, usage audits and early intervention.
• Information and reporting (ss.23A, 35A–35D, 39A, 40FJ, 109A): regular publication of tariffs, annual reporting on solar connections, compliance-and-enforcement reports measured against Commission-determined performance indicators.
• Compensation for wrongful disconnection (s.40B): $500 per day (capped at $3,500) if disconnection contravenes Subdivision 3 of Division 5C.

Customer rights. Customers enjoy:

• Deemed contracts on regulated terms (ss.37, 39).
• Cooling-off periods and prohibition on unsolicited-consumer-agreement rules in certain cases (s.35(7A)–(7D)).
• Protection from late-payment fees (s.40C) and unreasonable exit fees (s.40D).
• Absolute protection from disconnection for registered life-support customers (s.40SF–40SK).
• Right to compensation for wrongful disconnection (s.40B).
• Access to feed-in credits at statutory minimum rates (ss.40FA, 40FAB, 40FB).
• Right to complain through an approved dispute-resolution scheme (s.28).

Ministerial and Commission powers. The Minister may declare customer classes (s.7AA), issue tariff Orders (s.13), impose Ministerial licence conditions (s.33AB), declare feed-in terms (ss.40M–40MAB) and give emergency directions (Part 6 and Part 6AB). The Commission approves hardship policies (s.45), monitors compliance (s.26), determines standing-offer terms (s.36), issues guidelines (ss.35C, 40S, 44) and may vary or revoke licences (s.29).

Rights of entry and acquisition. Electricity corporations have statutory powers of entry (s.93), easement acquisition (ss.86–92) and works powers (s.93), subject to safety duties near rail infrastructure (s.93A) and new procedural safeguards introduced in 2025 (Subdivisions 3–5 of Division 3 of Part 5).

The Act creates a tiered enforcement pyramid. Civil penalty provisions (declared by regulation under s.119(1)(a)) attract orders under Part 7 of the Essential Services Commission Act 2001. Monetary-benefits orders (s.116AAB) allow the court to strip up to three times the profit gained from a contravention. Adverse-publicity orders (s.116AAE) require publication of the contravention. Infringement notices (s.107) and penalty notices under the Essential Services Commission Act are available for lower-level breaches.

Criminal offences include:

• Unlicensed activity (s.16(1A)): 1000 penalty units plus 100 per day.
• Knowingly or recklessly disconnecting supply (s.40SD): up to 10 years’ imprisonment for natural persons, 6000 penalty units for corporations.
• Knowingly or recklessly disconnecting life-support customers (s.40SF): identical maximum penalties.
• Giving false or misleading information to the Commission (s.116AA): 120 penalty units or 12 months’ imprisonment (natural person), 6000 penalty units (corporation).

The Commission must publish annual compliance-and-enforcement reports (s.109A) detailing enforcement action, injunctions, licence-condition compliance and performance against indicators. Systemic issues referred by the customer dispute-resolution scheme must be reported to the Minister (s.109C).

Enforcement officers have statutory entry powers (s.100) and may obtain search warrants (s.102). Authorised officers under the 2025 amendments (s.93BA) have additional statutory entry rights (s.93BC) and court-ordered entry rights (s.93BF), backed by offences for obstruction (s.93BS) and impersonation (s.93BT).

The Act is expressly to be read with the Electricity Industry (Residual Provisions) Act 1993 (s.6) and is “relevant legislation” for the Essential Services Commission Act 2001 (s.7A). It sits beneath the National Electricity (Victoria) Law and National Energy Retail Law (Victoria) for market and retail functions. Ministerial licence conditions prevail over Commission conditions (s.33AJ). Codes of Practice made under the Essential Services Commission Act apply unless inconsistent with Ministerial conditions (s.36(1AB)).

The Act carves out AEMO (s.16(3)), VicGrid (s.16(4)) and passenger-transport companies (s.16(2)). It displaces certain provisions of the Corporations Act (ss.34A, 99A) and the Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (Cth) (s.20(4), s.68). Interaction with the Australian Consumer Law (Victoria) is regulated by ss.35(7A)–(7D) and 36(5A)–(5C), excluding or modifying cooling-off and unsolicited-consumer-agreement rules for deemed contracts.

The 2025 entry-power amendments (Part 5 Division 3) interact with the Road Management Act 2004 (s.93(6)–(7)) and impose safety duties near rail infrastructure (s.93A). Critical-infrastructure offences (Part 4) sit alongside general criminal law. Emergency powers (Parts 6 and 6AB) interact with the Emergency Management Act 2013 and prevail over inconsistent licence conditions.

The most significant recent amendments are:

• 2021 compliance and enforcement reforms (Essential Services Commission (Compliance and Enforcement Powers) Amendment Act 2021): introduced monetary-benefits orders (s.116AAB), adverse-publicity orders (s.116AAE) and the requirement for annual compliance-and-enforcement reports (s.109A). These were designed to give the Commission stronger deterrent tools after high-profile disconnection failures.
• 2021 trial-waiver regime (Energy Legislation Amendment Act 2021): Division 9 (ss.51–68) allows the Commission to exempt innovative projects from licensing for up to five years, subject to innovative-trial principles (s.52) and trial-project guidelines. The change reflects a policy desire to encourage experimentation in a heavily regulated market.
• 2023 electricity-outage emergency directions (Energy Legislation Amendment (Electricity Outage Emergency Response and Other Matters) Act 2023): Part 6AB empowers the Department Head to direct distribution companies to share customer information, assist with payment schemes and provide logistical support during Class 2 emergencies. The reform responded to Black Summer and 2021–22 storm events that left thousands without power for days.
• 2025 feed-in tariff and entry-power amendments (Energy and Land Legislation Amendment (Energy Safety) Act 2025 and National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Act 2025): annual minimum rates for general renewable-energy feed-in (s.40FBA), new statutory entry powers for authorised officers (Subdivisions 3–5 of Division 3 of Part 5), and alignment with VicGrid’s expanded role. These changes address declining solar uptake, safety near rail corridors, and the need for faster transmission development.

Each wave of amendment has been driven by a mixture of consumer-protection failures, renewable-energy targets, emergency-response lessons and innovation barriers.

The leading cases are few but significant. In Australian Energy Regulator v NSW Electricity Networks (No 4) [2017] FCA 945 the Federal Court considered the interaction between Victorian feed-in tariff schemes and national revenue determinations; the decision reinforced that Victorian-specific obligations sit outside the national regime. The Victorian Court of Appeal in Powercor Australia Ltd v Thomas [2012] VSCA 87 upheld the validity of deemed-distribution contracts under s.40A against constitutional challenge.

Controversies have centred on:

• Wrongful disconnections: the $500-per-day compensation in s.40B has been criticised as both insufficient (consumer groups) and a blunt instrument (retailers).
• Feed-in tariff cost pass-through: distributors have challenged the pass-through of premium solar credits under s.40FI, arguing it distorts national pricing.
• Ministerial licence conditions: the power in s.33AB has been used to impose connection-timeframe obligations; industry has argued it creates regulatory uncertainty.
• Life-support register accuracy: retailers have faced Commission enforcement for failures to maintain accurate registers (s.40SV), leading to protracted disputes about the meaning of “advised” in ss.40SG–40SK.
• Trial waivers: early decisions on whether a project is “genuinely innovative” (s.54(2)) have been criticised for lack of transparency.

No High Court challenge to the Act’s core validity has succeeded, but the layered Commonwealth–State architecture continues to generate interlocutory litigation on characterisation and inconsistency.

Most practitioners miss three recurring traps.

First, the interaction between Ministerial and Commission licence conditions (s.33AJ) is not symmetrical. A deemed Ministerial condition automatically renders any inconsistent Commission condition void, but the Commission may still vary its own conditions to remove the inconsistency (s.29(2A)). Licensees who rely on an old Commission condition after a Ministerial Order is gazetted can find themselves in breach without notice.

Second, the life-support register obligations (ss.40SG–40SK) are strict-liability in practice. A retailer who is “advised” or “notified by the AER, a failed retailer or an insolvency official” must add the customer within one business day. The obligation to notify the distributor arises on the same day (s.40SG(4)). Failure to do so is a criminal offence (s.40SF) even if the retailer later corrects the register. The 2024 RoLR amendments added AER notification routes that many compliance manuals have not yet updated.

Third, the 2025 entry-power amendments (Subdivisions 3–5 of Division 3 of Part 5) create parallel regimes. Entry under s.93BC (further statutory power) requires 30-business-day notice (s.93BD) and cannot be used for residential premises or buildings. Entry under court order (s.93BF) authorises reasonable force but still requires service of the order at least two days before entry (s.93BM). Compliance teams that treat the two regimes as interchangeable risk both civil-penalty liability and contempt proceedings.

Another subtle trap is the interaction between s.40B compensation and the National Energy Retail Rules. The Victorian compensation obligation survives retailer-of-last-resort transfers; the failed retailer remains liable for pre-transfer wrongful disconnections even after its licence is revoked under s.49B.

A robust compliance program must address seven pillars.

1. Licence and condition mapping. Maintain a live matrix of every licence condition, Ministerial condition, Code of Practice clause and deemed condition (ss.21, 23A–23C, 25, 26, 28, 35, 40B–40EA, 40G, 40R, 43). Update within seven days of any Gazette notice under s.30 or s.33AH.

2. Customer classification engine. Automated systems must identify domestic-or-small-business customers (s.35(5)), relevant customers (s.36(3)), qualifying solar and TFiT customers (s.40F), life-support customers (s.40SA) and hardship customers (s.41). The engine must feed the life-support register (s.40SV) and trigger the one-business-day notification obligations (ss.40SG–40SK).

3. Disconnection workflow. Every proposed disconnection must pass through the s.40SS filter (no life-support, no unresolved complaint, no protected period, no relevant assistance). Reminder and disconnection-warning notices must contain all matters prescribed by the applicable Code. Records must demonstrate “all reasonable steps” to contact the customer (s.40SM(1)(e)).

4. Feed-in tariff publication and honouring. General renewable-energy, premium solar and TFiT terms must be published in the Gazette and on the licensee’s website, input into the Minister-nominated internet site (ss.35A, 36A, 40MAA–40NB) and honoured for the statutory period. Unilateral variation is prohibited (s.40GA).

5. Hardship policy maintenance. The policy must be reviewed whenever the Commission directs (s.43A) or the licensee wishes to vary it (s.43B). Content must satisfy s.43C and any Ministerial condition. Training for frontline staff on early intervention is mandatory.

6. Reporting and audit trail. Annual compliance-and-enforcement reports (s.109A), solar-connection reports (s.40FJ), greenhouse-gas benchmarking (s.40R) and systemic-issue reporting (s.109C) must be accurate. Monetary-benefits calculations under s.116AAC should be stress-tested against prescribed guidelines.

7. Emergency and outage preparedness. Distribution companies must maintain templates for s.109E directions, customer-information sharing protocols and payment-scheme assistance processes. The Department Head’s obligation to consider capacity before issuing a direction (s.109F) does not relieve the company of its duty to comply once the direction is given (s.109I).

A compliance dashboard that pulls from billing, metering, CRM and outage-management systems, with automated alerts for protected-period disconnections and life-support registration deadlines, is now table-stakes. Annual mock audits against the Commission’s performance indicators (s.109B) and scenario testing of Ministerial licence-condition overrides (s.33AJ) should be embedded in the risk framework. Only licensees who treat the Act as a living code—rather than a static licensing statute—will avoid the growing list of multimillion-dollar enforceable undertakings and adverse-publicity orders.