Page 4254 - Week 13 - Thursday, 27 November 2014
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regulation of medium-scale generators—those above 30 kilowatts but below 30 megawatts—in the hands of the technical regulator.
With regard to energy, two levels of regulation will exist under the bill: licences for those utilities over 30 megawatts and operating certificates for those utilities under 30 megawatts—small to medium-scale generators. The intent is that the operating certificate approach will be tailored to the nature and scale of the generators, a bespoke licensing system that acknowledges that medium-scale generators can function very differently depending on the technology and other aspects. I note that in the original bill this threshold was above five megawatts, but the amendments circulated by the minister indicate that the threshold has been raised to 30 megawatts. Given that 30 megawatts is also the trigger for engagement by the national regulator, this seems appropriate and far more flexible for medium generators. Officials from the directorate also indicated that, at this size of generation capacity, any failure of generation or supply is not likely to pose a potential risk to the stability of the network or supply.
Let me give an example of how the role of the regulator could make things easier for medium-scale generators. In the past, sometimes the distributor would ask for a network study, which could cost generators a significant amount of money. That network study is designed to ascertain whether the energy into the grid might cause a stability problem. While the distributor has a legal right to ask for this, in the eyes of the generators, it was often not required, and the cost of it could be an unnecessary burden on small to medium generators. The technical regulator can now play an active role in these decisions and perhaps provide a more objective assessment of what is required to ensure grid stability.
This bill also updates provisions for dam safety, to be consistent with other states and territories, and addresses safety management for dams.
This is a very technical bill. Given the stage of the day, I will not go into details. However, I will run over the nature of some of the provisions.
The bill establishes the capacity to make technical codes and then a range of enforcement mechanisms and offences. It also has provisions determining notifiable incidents with regard to dangerous incidents such as gas leaks, explosions, electric shocks or collapse of infrastructure. A number of provisions deal with the protection of regulated networks and offences around interference of networks and, with regard to water, prohibited substances and unauthorised abstraction. It outlines the mechanism for operating certificates, how they apply and are revoked et cetera. There are other points that I will not go into, given the hour.
I will speak briefly to the amendments.
While this bill is technical in nature, my office consulted with both the renewable energy sector and the ICRC to determine whether they had any substantive concerns. I am pleased to say that, in preparing amendments for today’s debate, both of those stakeholder groups reported that their major concerns had been addressed.
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