Milking it

In this Weekly Dispatch:

1. The AEMC’s final pricing review recommends shifting tariff complexity off household bills and onto retailers — pricing electricity “like milk” — while flagging up to $6 billion in network savings by 2040 and forcing retailers to disclose loyalty penalties.
2. Transgrid is asking the AER to recover roughly $1.1 billion of its $1.5 billion EnergyConnect blowout from consumers, after the NSW interconnector’s cost increased from $1.8 billion to $3.6 billion.
3. Singapore-based Firmus is on track to become Tasmania’s single largest electricity user, with AI factories proposed across Launceston, Bell Bay and Wesley Vale targeting up to 400 MW — as much as 15% of state supply.
4. The AER has granted five-year trial waivers letting VIOTAS and Enel X enrol large multi-site industrial loads in the Wholesale Demand Response Mechanism, testing whether flexible demand can ease peaks and defer grid investment.
5. Western Power has begun building 18 community batteries across Perth and Bunbury — 6.6 MW combined, part-funded by ARENA — to soak up rooftop solar and discharge into the evening peak.
6. Hyundai has completed Australia’s first V2G discharge using the ISO 15118-20 standard, pairing an IONIQ 9 with a CEC-listed StarCharge bidirectional charger as ARENA forecasts up to 2.6 million V2G homes by 2040.
7. The Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed El Niño is underway, with the Niño3.4 index at +0.92°C — above its +0.80°C threshold — bringing the BoM into line with NOAA and the WMO and signalling a drier, hotter winter–spring for eastern Australia.
8. Endgame’s own piece, republished on WattClarity, argues the NEM’s deterministic planning hides tail risk and that the ESOO is no longer fit as a resilience instrument — making the case for stochastic modelling, stress-testing and wargaming.
9. INPEX is launching a commercial trial of blue hydrogen power generation in Niigata, with first electricity sales due mid-June from a 1 MW turbine made by Germany’s 2G — hydrogen made from domestic natural gas, with the CO₂ sequestered in a depleted nearby gas field.
10. Podcast of the week:  Let Me Sum Up chat about the Domestic Gas Reservation Scheme draft Design Framework, which is out for consultation.