Electricity networks

Electricity network engagement connects investment decisions with consumers’ priorities and the effects of projects on communities and landholders. SCA offers engagement planning, facilitation, reporting and corporate affairs advice for transmission and distribution businesses.

## Revenue proposals and consumers

The Australian Energy Regulator’s Better Resets Handbook, the July 2024 version, sets out expectations for consumer-centric network proposals. It provides a basis for considering how engagement contributes to the proposal, rather than treating consultation as a separate account of activities.

SCA can help a network team define the questions consumers can influence, prepare accessible material, plan forums or reference groups, and explain how the resulting evidence informs the proposal. The network’s specialists remain responsible for its technical and financial analysis.

## Projects and affected people

For a new line, substation or upgrade, the engagement programme needs to fit the project’s route, design and construction decisions. Work can include stakeholder mapping, community and landholder engagement, issues advice, briefings and reporting. The handover guide provides a separate method for carrying commitments into delivery.

## Relevant experience

Chris Hanna led consumer and stakeholder engagement for an energy network’s five-year revenue proposal to the Australian Energy Regulator, and was an engagement lead on the South Australian side of a major interstate transmission project from approvals through construction to commissioning.

An initial conversation establishes the project or regulatory timetable, the work already under way and the decisions requiring engagement. Each assignment is scoped and quoted before it starts.