Customer & Societal Objectives

Electric Power Systems function as critical societal Systems in all modern economies. As these societal systems transform, so do the expectations of individual Customers and the wider community.

While the actual objectives and their rank-order priority will vary across different jurisdictions, communities and cultures, a meta-analysis of the global literature has highlighted the following eight themes of Customer & Societal Objectives:

1. Dependable: Safe, secure, adequate, reliable and resilient;  
2. Affordable: Efficient and cost-effective;  
3. Sustainable: Enables 2030 and 2050 decarbonisation goals;  
4. Equitable: Broad accessibility of benefits and the fair sharing of costs;  
5. Empowering: Advances customer and community agency, optionality, and customisation; 
6. Expandable: Enables electrification of transport, building services and industrial processes;  
7. Adaptable: Flexible and adaptive to change, including technological, regulatory and business model innovation; and,  
8. Beneficial: Socially trusted, public good/benefits, commercially investable and financeable.  

The wide diversity of things we expect of our Power System is particularly noteworthy, as is the reality that giving greater priority to some objectives will typically impact the ability to fully realise other objectives. For example, deeper and more rapid decarbonisation of the Power System (Sustainable) may impact System Security risks (Dependable) and escalated system costs (Affordable).