Community Hub
Our Electricity Distribution Price Review (EDPR) proposal outlines our plans and costs for managing and operating the electricity distribution network for the period 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2031. After extensive customer and stakeholder engagement and development of our plans over several years, we submitted our initial proposal to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) on 31 January 2025. During 2025 and 2026 we received a Draft Decision from the AER, submitted a Revised Proposal addressing their feedback and received the Final Decision on 30 April 2026.
On 30 April 2026, the AER released its final decision, which approved $2.6 billion to maintain and upgrade our electricity distribution network, along with $1.6 billion to operate the network over the next five years.
The approved funding enables us to continue prioritising safe and reliable electricity services for customers and communities across Victoria. However, the final decision is around $800 million less than the investment AusNet proposed and, therefore, we will need to make careful choices as electricity demand continues to increase through electrification and population growth and as we experience more frequent severe weather events.
We will review the AER’s decision in detail and carefully consider its implications for our plans, priorities and how we deliver for customers and communities.
You can find more information on the AER’s decision here.
View our Revised Electricity Distribution Price Review Plan (2026–2031)
After extensive engagement with our EDPR Panel members, we shared a draft of our proposal to gather feedback from customers, stakeholders, and the broader community. This input helped shape our Initial Proposal.
Click below to read our Draft Proposal.
Continuing to work closely with our EDPR Panel and incorporating feedback from the broader community, we developed our Initial Proposal, submitted on 31 January 2025 to the AER. This 388-page document outlines our Initial plans for the 2026–31 regulatory period.
Click below to read our Initial Proposal.
Looking for a quick snapshot of our Initial Proposal?
We’ve created a 15-page summary of our Initial Proposal, designed to give customers a concise overview of the key themes and priorities for the 2026–31 regulatory period.
Click below to read the Summary.
Our plan was developed with valuable input from customers and stakeholders. We wanted to focus on what matters most to our customers and have shaped our approach around that.
We've actively listened to and engaged with customers and stakeholders throughout the process to address their priorities and help balance overall value-for-money and affordability through our plan.
To develop the draft plan, we worked closely with six dedicated panels on key topics for our Proposal, see each of them below. Before publishing and submitting our Initial Proposal to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER), we shared the draft plan with customers and stakeholders, gathered further input, and refined the plan based on their feedback.
Following the AER’s draft decision, we undertook a short engagement period to discuss the decision and worked again with the panels to shape our Revised Proposal submission.
You can find out more about how we thread the customer voice throughout our Proposal and the various engagement activities undertook.
The Coordination Group is made up of 6 members who are also members of one or more panels.
The group oversees a number of tasks including identifying and raising conflicts or overlaps between panels, and works collaboratively with AusNet to identify value-stacking opportunities.
Understanding our customers' preferences regarding network reliability, resilience and availability, and ensure our investment plans appropriately balance affordability and reliability.
Understanding the service levels customers value and expect, including how customers want to interact with us and how that might change in the future.
Understanding our customers' preferences around new technologies, including the best ways the network can unlock more value for all customers.
Understanding how to design and implement network pricing that reflects customer behaviour and their interaction with electricity.
Understanding AusNet's benchmarking performance and implications for the review proposal for consumer outcomes.
The Research & Engagement panel works across all panels to ensure they have access to customer insights needed for their discussions. The Research & Engagement panel also participates in designing research and engagement activities and assists with prioritising resources.
We shared a draft of our proposal to gather more feedback from the general public and key stakeholders.
Click the link below to read the customer feedback we received.
Learn more about the customer workshops we're running across our electricity distribution network and other opportunities for customers and communities to engage with us as we develop our 5-year plan for the electricity distribution network.
Our engagement plan is a ‘living’ document, which outlines the engagement we will undertake on our EDPR 2026-31 program until we submit our proposal to the AER in early 2025.
We both recognise, and support, this document changing over time, as customer and other stakeholders begin their engagement activities with us, and as environmental circumstances continue to change. Updates to this document will be shared via the EDPR 2026-31 pages on Community Hub throughout 2023, 2024 and 2025.
View earlier versions of our engagement plan:
Our EDPR 2026-31 Engagement plan is the result of a co-design process with customer representatives and other stakeholders, and which builds on:
You can read the report from the co-design workshop, which helped us build and develop our engagement plan.
As outlined in the Letter of Agreement, panel members agree to declare all actual, perceived or potential conflicts of interest. Should a conflict of interest arise, members are asked to notify AusNet as soon as possible, disclose the conflict, and take steps that AusNet advises to manage or resolve the conflict. AusNet maintains a Conflict of Interest Register that records these disclosures, as well as actions taken in response to their disclosure.
To find out more, visit AusNet's Code of Conduct.
