On 27 November 2025, the Reliability Panel (The Panel) published a draft report for the 2026 Reliability Standard and Settings Review (2026 RSSR). The Panel has made several draft recommendations:

• Since the 2022 Review, the cost of open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) has increased, and the reported value consumers place on reliability has decreased. As such, our draft modelling results suggest a reliability standard from 0.002 to 0.004 per cent unserved energy (USE) best promotes customers’ long-term interests.
• A reliability standard at the midpoint of 0.003 per cent USE is most aligned with balancing cost and how customers experience reliability, while minimising changes to the market price settings.
• We propose to retain the market floor price at -$1,000/MWh and set the market to automatically clear at the market floor price during Minimum System Load level 3 (MSL3) conditions.
• We propose to retain the administered price cap and administered floor price at $600/MWh and -$600/MWh, respectively.

The Panel is committed to seeking stakeholder feedback on its draft report and providing opportunities for engagement. The Panel invites submissions from interested parties in response to this draft report by Thursday, 29 January 2026.

The Panel’s draft recommendation is that the long-term interests of customers are best promoted by a reliability standard ranging from 0.002% to 0.004% USE

A standard within this range would result in minimal practical impacts on the reliability level that customers experience day-to-day, while also reducing the cost implications of achieving the reliability standard.  

While the characteristics of outages differ and there are no reliability events in most years in most regions, the current reliability standard of 0.002 per cent USE is equivalent to 10 minutes of lost supply per year for all energy users in the NEM (USE of 0.003% and 0.004% would correspond to 16 and 21 minutes per year, respectively).

We note that a reliability standard of 0.003 per cent USE is most likely to result in minimal changes to the market price settings, while also balancing the impact on customer experience due to reliability issues. That is, it likely best balances the cost impacts of outages against the cost of building more generation or storage capacity to avoid them.  

The Panel is seeking feedback on the optimal combination of market price cap and the cumulative price threshold

The draft report seeks stakeholder feedback on the optimal level of the standard within that range, as well as the associated market price cap and cumulative price threshold required to deliver that standard.

We have seen increases in the capital cost of gas-fired generation, and a reduction in the value customers place on reliability  

Since the Panel's last review of the standard and settings in 2022, we have seen two key changes in the market that impact the level of the standard and, therefore, the possible level of the MPC and CPT:

1. While the costs of building batteries have reduced, the costs to build new gas-fired generation have gone up, which means it will cost more to deliver equivalent levels of reliability.  
2. The VCR, determined by the Australian Energy Regulator (AER), has decreased in all regions, with an average decrease of about 18 per cent. This means that customers, on average, place less value on the same level of reliability.

The impact of these two changes is that, on balance, a different reliability standard could limit the cost impacts on consumers without significantly impacting the value of reliability they experience.  

The Panel has made several other draft recommendations

In it’s draft report, the Panel recommends:  

• retaining the market floor price (MFP) at -$1,000/MWh as our analysis indicates this level adequately allows the market to clear excess supply.  
• that the market automatically clears at the MFP during Minimum System Load level 3 (MSL3) conditions, as such a trigger would transparently reflect system needs and may minimise the need for AEMO intervention.
• retaining the current form of the cumulative price threshold as it serves the best interests of consumers by simply effectively and transparently accumulating prices.  
• retaining the administered price cap and administered floor price at $600/MWh and -$600/MWh as they maintain the intended price signals while encouraging continued participation during periods of extended high prices.
• retaining the current approach to indexing the market price settings in accordance with the RSS guidelines.