Customer connections - what's new?

Greenfield connections

With United Energy's network covering some of the state’s highest growth areas for residential development, we understand the need to deliver timely connection services for the development industry.

Over the past few years, we have been working closely with the residential development industry to streamline our processes and support developers in improving the quality of built electrical assets. We want to make sure Victorians can access new homes faster, while also being confident their power supply is safe and reliable.

We know there’s always more to be done so we are continuing to engage with stakeholders to deliver further reductions in timelines to the design and audit process.

Greenfields customer consultative committee

In 2021, we established a customer consultative committee aimed at encouraging effective engagement with the development industry to look at better ways of delivering services and improving response times without compromising on safety and quality when power assets are being built.

This committee focuses on greenfield developments and seeks to provide open communication and accessibility between the development industry, contractors and consultants and United Energy alongside CitiPower and Powercor.

The committee also allows us to report on our performance measures developed in collaboration with the development industry as part of our customer service standards set during a review by the Essential Services Commission of Victoria.

Our response to the ESC review, which includes the committee’s terms of reference and our customer outcomes statement is available here.

Tie-in

Currently, a request for tie-in is generally submitted to United Energy with a signed Certificate of Practical Completion. Often, United Energy doesn't have visibility of when to expect this submission and we reactively plan for an asset to be tied into the electricity grid. United Energy currently targets tie-in to be completed within 10 weeks from practical completion.

Following feedback from industry, United Energy is committed to reducing our target turnaround time from 10 weeks to 4 weeks (or as otherwise agreed for a development).

Achieving this outcome requires a few process changes effective immediately:

• Tie-in requests shall be submitted to the Project Delivery Lead at the same time as a request for Final Audit
• Both United Energy and the developer commit to an agreed delivery plan which includes a forecast Date of Practical Completion and Customer Target Date (the date by which a development will be tied in).
• Notify United Energy immediately if you can no longer deliver to the agreed plan.