Exploration of Commercial Datasets to Answer Questions About Household and SME Energy Use and Costs

⁠⁠⁠We are looking for a group with access to datasets that they can analyse to tell us about how households and SMEs are being affected by increased energy prices and changes in energy use and services, and what they are doing in response.

The Department of the Environment and Energy has a need to better understand what is happening to energy bills for households and SMEs. As well as supporting energy policy directly, outputs will also contribute to the Energy Use Data Model, designed to support a wide range of research for better energy market forecasting and planning, and better consumer services.

Examples of the types of questions we would like to answer include:

1. How have energy bills (electricity and gas) for households and small business changed over time?

2. What characteristics predict higher energy bills? For example demographic, geographical differences, behavioural indicators or situational factors like renting, availability of competitive offers or fuel alternatives, industry sector or particular business activities etc

3. Can we identify particular groups that are more affected by energy bill stress?

4. Are the opportunities in your dataset to differentiate between energy use volume and energy price, and how they change over time?

5. Is there any evidence of households or businesses responding to rising energy costs? For example, switching energy providers, fuel switching (including installing PV), changing behaviour to reduce energy use or investing in energy efficiency to reduce bills.

6. Can we identify characteristics that predict different types of response? For example proportional size of bill to wider costs or revenue, firm characteristics or household demographics, behaviours in other sectors like shopping habits, liquidity or financing constraints; ownership versus leasing/renting versus locating within an embedded network (like a shopping mall or large apartment block); ANZSIC sectors or activity types; company size, growth rate or profitability; particular energy providers or regions; management characteristics or behaviours

7. Can we identify ‘trigger events’ that are influencing certain households or firms/industries to respond to energy costs? For example receiving particularly high bills, family or activity changes, failure of equipment, new offers in the market.

8. Who is switching tariffs/retailers and how often? Are those who switch their retailer/tariff benefiting? How different are their new energy costs? Are any savings sustained over time?

9. Do energy costs impact firm performance? Or household vulnerability? Controlling for all other factors, is there an observable/identifiable impact on Australian businesses or households when energy costs rise/fall?