• establish a database recording the status and scale of retail demand-side programmes and initiatives, and customer involvement in the national market;
• determine the likely trends for future involvement of the demand-side in the national market;
• develop, monitor and report on appropriate indicators of demand-side participation; and
• discover customer attitudes to the market, particularly their understanding of the market design, level of interest in proactive demand-side participation, threshold issues and appropriate incentives for more pro-active participation, expectations of the market and market intermediaries, and their support for existing and appetite for new or additional retail demand-side products.

Questionnaires were sent to a cross-section of eligible customers and to all registered retailers to obtain the broadest possible view of the current state of demand-side activity.

The survey was undertaken for NECA by PHB Hagler Bailly. Their report into the results of the survey is available to download. A summary of the report’s findings, presented by PHB Hagler Bailly to a meeting of NECA’s demand-side participation reference group, is also available to download.

The report and the report of the Victorian security of electricity supply taskforce emphasises the importance of removing barriers to demand-side participation. The Code Change Panel is therefore at the same time publishing a consultation paper aimed at improving the accuracy of demand forecasts, so that they can provide a firmer and more reliable basis for that participation, and at making the arrangements that already exist in the Code for demand-side bidding more attractive to end-use customers.