Carrington Clarke

I'm Carrington Clark.

And I'm Daniel Mercer, the ABC's energy reporter.

G'day Carrington, and it's nice to be here.

Let's hope I can live up to the lofty standards you're setting.

Suffice to say, it's one of these organisations, the Australian Energy Market Commission, that most people know nothing about.

And most people are probably perfectly fine with that, probably live happier lives because of it, to be honest.

It's sort of the wonkiest of the wonky of energy organisations in the country, arguably.

They set the rules that govern the national electricity market, which is the grid that basically covers the eastern seaboard from Queensland down to Tasmania and across to South Australia.

It's the country's biggest grid.

It services something like 10, 11 million customers.

It's the majority of the country's population and economy.

And, you know, in this sort of sprawling electricity system, the AMC is the body that sort of sets the rules that, you know, all the generators have to live by and that sort of sets the rules of the game, as it were.

There are other bodies which sort of do other things, like the Australian Energy Regulator, which is the cop on the beat, so to speak, and the Australian Energy Market Operator, which runs the market itself.

But the AEMC, I mean, these guys make the rules and also give advice to governments.

You're quite right, Carrington.

I think it's probably worth qualifying everything that we're about to talk about by pointing out that it's the networks we're really talking to here.

So the poles and wires companies that transport the electricity from where it's generated to where it's used.

There are obviously other parts of the supply chain that are huge, but we're really talking about the poles and wires here.

Basically, it all comes down to the fact

that the way we're using the electricity system is changing as you just alluded to whereas in the past it was all pretty simple people you know sat at the end of the line and bought power when they needed it from the grid it's now much more complex and a much more dynamic picture and just look at the number of households with solar panels from memory i think there are about four million of them across the country so that's one in every three homes which is a pretty staggering figure