DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.24550585.v1
title: <i>Electricity retail regulation in Australian settlements focusing on residential consumer protections and providing sociodemographic and remoteness indicators</i>

description: This data set includes 1) customised geographies for 3047 settlements in Australia and their associated sociodemographic data as calculated from ABS data, and 2) detailed codes reflecting the legal protections for residential electricity customers across 12 selected indicators, which applied in each settlement in Australia on 1 July 2022. This data is best interpreted with the associated codebook.<b>Geography identification</b>The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Urban Centres and Localities (UCL) dataset identifies all settlements in Australia with populations of 200 or more people. There are also many smaller towns and settlements in Australia. To capture both large and small settlements, we developed a detailed settlement classification based on ABS’s smallest geographical units, Mesh Blocks (MBs), which cover the whole country without gaps or overlaps and which are intended to contain between 30 and 60 dwellings. Settlements have latitude and longitude of centre point included. We identified settlements using several steps:Estimated Residential Populations (ERP) at 30 June 2021 are imputed for every MB for the total population and the Indigenous population by progressively downscaling state/territory ERPs using Census counts tabulated at the SA4, SA3, SA2, SA1 and MB level.All MBs within a UCLs are allocated to that UCL.All remaining MBs classified by the ABS as being primarily used for residential purposes are grouped into clusters based on spatial contiguity.Clusters of MBs that are contiguous with a UCL are allocated to that UCL.Unallocated MB clusters are classified based on OpenStreetMap data. Specifically, a place name is allocated to a cluster of MBs if the MBs intersect an OpenStreetMap node with a “place” tag containing any of the values “city”, “town”, “village”, “hamlet” or “isolated_dwelling” and with a “name” tag.Unallocated MB clusters with a total ERP of 20 or less are excluded.Unallocated MB clusters that are within 10 km of a UCL are allocated to that UCL.Unallocated MB clusters that are within 10 km of a named OpenStreetMap place node (as above) are allocated to that place.Some outliers (e.g., prisons, a fracking field) were manually removed.Extensive manual checking against satellite photographs and other gazetteers was undertaken, especially of those MBs allocated to a settlement on the basis of distance to the closest named place. We manually added a number of named place nodes in OpenStreetMap based on a visual inspection of interim results.The exclusions column reflects 42 settlements (additional to the mapped 3047) for which names were identified but for which there is incomplete sociodemographic and policy data; we do not recommend using these settlements for analytical purposes.<i>Sociodemographic data mapped to this settlement level</i>SEIFA indicators for the customised geographies, calculated as a population-weighted average of its constituent MBs. IRSAD, IRSD, IER, and IEO are included. See ABS for descriptions of these indicators.Remoteness as a dichotomous indicator (0 = 'Remote' or 'Very Remote'; 1 = ‘Major Cities’, ‘Inner Regional’, ‘Outer Regional’). Remoteness is determined from the ABS 2021 Remoteness Areas (see associated manuscript for further details).Estimated Resident Population (ERP).Percent of population that is Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander People.<b>Coding of legal protections</b>Data collection was completed during October 2021 to February 2023 and included review of 284 legal documents to identify protections in each settlement (reflected in respective "Agency, document" columns). Regulatory environment at the settlement level was cross-checked with review of over 800 further documents to ensure no exceptions were overlooked. Settlements were coded based on their legal protections up to and including 1 July 2022. Regulation undergoes frequent iteration, and there were many pending changes variously proposed, in draft form or in the process of introduction during our review. For example, one major change not captured by review is the transfer for responsibility for electricity services for 141 remote Aboriginal communities in WA (Remote Essential and Municipal Services communities) from the Department of Communities to the licensed utility Horizon Power (effective 1 April 2023). Document review focused on consumer focused electricity retail regulation (such as the National Energy Retail Law, NERL). Where categories of interest for electricity services fell within distributor remit as opposed to retailer remit (such as solar connections), we reviewed the appropriate documents associated with that level of electricity regulation (such as the National Electricity Rules (NER) made by the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) under the NEL). Further details on the regulatory review process are included in the associated manuscript.We mapped twelve categories, separately recording prepay and post-pay customer protections where applicable. Separate coding of prepay and post-pay was undertaken due to the different types of legal protections afforded to customers for each of these payment types. The coding questions are as follows:Is the use of prepayment meters expressly prohibited by act, regulation, code, or licence condition?Are protections from disconnection due to non-payment required for life support customers pursuant to act, regulation, code or licence condition? (pre and post)Is the retailer required to have a family violence policy pursuant to act, regulation, code or licence condition? (pre and post)Is the retailer required to provide protections from disconnection/self-disconnection during an extreme weather event pursuant to act, regulation, code, or licence condition? (pre and post)Does an act, regulation, code or licence condition establish a guaranteed service level scheme which the distributor must adhere to regarding unplanned interruptions in the customer's electricity supply? (pre and post)What type of discretion does the regulation establish for customer right to connect residential solar?In the contract (such as a model standing offer) that a customer would refer to when connecting solar to a distribution network, are there clear eligibility criteria laid out under which the consumer could reasonably expect the distributor to approve a connection request for solar? (pre and post)Is the retailer required to report total numbers of customer disconnections for non‐payment (i.e., disconnections in the case of post-pay or so-called ‘self‐disconnections’ in the case of prepay) pursuant to act, regulation, code, or licence condition? (pre and post)Does an act, regulation, code, or licence condition require the retailer to have and publish customer complaints / dispute resolution procedures? (pre and post)Does an act, regulation, code, or licence condition require the retailer to be subject to an independent investigation and resolution process e.g., ombudsman scheme in relation to customer complaints / disputes? (pre and post)Does an act, regulation, code, or licence condition require the distributor to have and publish customer complaint / dispute resolution procedures? (pre and post)Does legislation, regulation, code, or licence condition require the distributor to be subject to an independent investigation and resolution process e.g., ombudsman scheme in relation to customer complaints / disputes? (pre and post)In addition to recording these protections, we also assessed:Do individual residential customers have a direct contractual relationship (e.g., a retail contract) with the utility?Is the settlement located within the National Electricity Market (NEM) (i.e., part of the interconnected network)?What category of NEM and consumer protections regime does the location belong to? (where the category is descriptive of the type of network (e.g., interconnected, isolated) and regulatory framework (e.g., NERL, local code) which applies for residential customers in each case).<br>