To help us, we’ve set up a panel of customers and other stakeholders to guide our work. Over the next couple of years, we will continue to talk to customers and communities on our network through a range of research and engagement activities.

Our Electricity Availability panel provides expertise to help us better understand our customers' preferences regarding network reliability, resilience and availability, and ensure our investment plans appropriately balance affordability and reliability. This takes into account the increased frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events, climate impacts and increasing customer reliance on electricity due to electrification and hybrid working.

Our electricity availability panel members are:

• Emma Birchall
• Kieran Donoghue
• Mark Grenning
• Chris Harvey
• Jeff Nottle
• Helen Bartley
• Tricia Hiley
• Piang Lilian

During our electricity availability panel meetings, we will be engaging with our panel members to answer the following focus questions:

1. Worst-served customers: How might we efficiently improve reliability for our worst-served customers to a level that is considered value for money to all customers?

2. General reliability: How might we assess how customer characteristics and activities are influencing the value they place on reliability and ensure our investment plans reflect this?

3. Resilience: How might we work with customers and other stakeholders to identify and plan for resilience solutions that meet our customers' needs?

4. Power quality: How might AusNet minimise adverse impacts of power quality and variability on customers?

5. Planned outages: How might AusNet best plan its works to minimise adverse impacts of planned outages on customers?