The Reliability Panel has published the final report for its Reliability Standard and Settings Review (RSSR), with recommendations for a modest adjustment to the reliability standard to reflect increasing costs and changing consumer preferences, and no changes to market price settings.
Reliability is about ensuring there is sufficient electricity to supply consumers when and where they need it.
The Reliability Panel comprises representatives from across the National Electricity Market (NEM), including small and large consumers, generators, distributed energy resources, networks, retailers and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).
During the RSSR process, the Panel is responsible for determining a reliability standard and market price settings that best protect the long-term interests of consumers.
The process involves balancing the settings that will encourage adequate investment in generation, storage, interconnection and demand response, to meet the level of reliability valued by consumers.
The Panel considers the RSSR periodically, and any recommendations are passed to the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) for consideration and implementation as part of its rule change process.
As part of its recommendations for 1 July 2028 – 30 June 2032, the Panel has proposed a modest relaxation of the reliability standard, from 99.998 per cent to 99.997 per cent reliability, while retaining the current market price settings.
The recommendations follow extensive economic and power system modelling, multiple rounds of consultation with industry and consumer bodies, and respond to two market changes since the Panel last conducted the RSSR in 2022.
First, increases in the cost of new gas-fired generation have raised the cost of delivering the uppermost level of system reliability. A mix of renewables, batteries, gas firming and demand response will support future system reliability; however, modelling indicates gas turbines remain, for now, the most effective measure for meeting reliability requirements in extreme scenarios.
Second, the value consumers place on reliability – the ‘VCR’ – a metric assessed by the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) every five years, has declined by an average of 18 per cent across the market.
Accordingly, the Panel has determined that retaining the current reliability standard for 2028 - 2032 would require large increases in market price settings, beyond the level that consumers are willing to pay.
The final recommendations are broadly consistent with the Panel’s draft RSSR recommendations, published in late 2025.
The market has historically delivered reliability levels that exceed the standard, and this performance is expected to continue into the 2030s.
Reliability Panel Chair Rainer Korte said the key recommendations seek to protect consumers by maintaining stable market price settings while aligning reliability levels with what customers value.
“A higher reliability standard usually requires stronger price signals, such as a higher market price cap, to incentivise investment to avoid rare outages, while lower standards reduce system costs but are linked to higher customer outage costs – the Panel’s job is to strike the right balance between these factors as the market evolves,” Mr Korte said.
“The final recommendations are designed to maintain strong reliability performance, while being mindful of impacts on households and businesses who are navigating cost of living challenges.
“We expect the recommended change to have no discernible impact on consumers’ day-to-day experience of reliability and, in those rare years where impacts do occur, we expect the effect to continue to be very limited.
“AEMO will continue to operate the power system in real time to meet all consumer demand and has a range of in-market and out-of-market tools available to do so. “
The Reliability Panel’s detailed market settings advice includes:
- modest change to the reliability standard to 0.003 (from 0.002) per cent expected unserved energy (USE) over the review period - equivalent to a long-term average of approximately 16 minutes (from 10 minutes) of generation-driven outages per customer per year;
- no changes to the current market price cap (MPC) at $22,800 and cumulative price threshold (CPT) at $2,235,600 in 2022 dollars;
- no changes to the market floor price (MFP) at -$1,000/MWh, with a recommendation that the AEMC consider revising the rules to clear the market at the MFP during minimum system load conditions;
- no changes to the administered price cap (APC) and administered floor price (AFP) at $600/MWh and -$600/MWh, respectively.
More about the Reliability Panel and reliability standard and market settings
The Reliability Panel monitors and reports on the security and reliability of the national electricity system and determines standards and guidelines used by market participants to maintain a reliable and secure power system for consumers.
The Panel operates under the AEMC governance, monitoring and reporting on the security and reliability of the system.
The reliability standard represents a targeted level of reliability over time – it does not mean that outages occur year by year.
The NEM has historically delivered very high reliability, with few supply interruptions due to generation shortfalls. Around 99 per cent of consumer outages are due to network issues rather than insufficient generation.
Visit the project page for more information on the review and for contact details.
Media: Jessica Rich, 0459 918 964, media@aemc.gov.au