EVs & charging

A draft rule would put part of the cost of public EV chargers on power bills. The AEMC's guide is about $1 a year for five years

On 24 September the Australian Energy Market Commission published a draft rule for the federal government's $40 million Accelerating EV Charging Program. Distribution networks that win grants would build fast chargers in regional blackspots and, where no private operator takes a site, slow kerbside chargers in higher-density areas, and recover around 70 per cent of the cost through network charges, including from customers who may never use them. The Commission's guide is around $1 a year for five years for a typical customer, and it says the real figure depends on which networks win. It is a draft: submissions close on 5 November.

6 October 2026 Checked 6 Oct 2026

The short answer

Will it reach my bill? Only if your distribution network takes part. The draft determination says the costs are recovered from electricity consumers within participating DNSP areas, and which networks take part is decided by a federal tender that has not yet run.
How much? The Commission says it cannot be precise, because the cost depends heavily on the spread of DNSPs that are successful. Its guide is around a $1.00 increase in annual bills for five years for a typical customer. That is about $5 in total (our arithmetic).
Is it decided? No. This is a draft. Submissions close on 5 November 2026, and the AEMC's media release says a final determination is due by the end of 2026.
When would chargers appear? The program is expected to commence in early 2027 and conclude in mid-2029.

What the program would build

The program is the Commonwealth's, designed and run by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. The AEMC's information sheet says it will place an estimated 14,000 chargers in locations the Commonwealth has identified as most needed, by 2029. It has three parts, and they carry very different costs for a household that pays network charges.

Regional blackspots. Networks bid to install fast (DC) chargers where private investment is unlikely, then appoint an operator to run them.
Kerbside, taken up by a private operator. In denser areas, networks propose sites and charge point operators get first right of refusal. An operator that takes a site pays to install, run and maintain its own charger.
Kerbside, last resort. Any site no operator wants, the network must fill with a slower AC charger and maintain it.

"Metropolitan" is wider than it sounds. A footnote in the draft determination says it may include places otherwise considered regional, such as Newcastle and Launceston.

Who pays, and the cap the Commission added

The program's funding split, as the draft determination describes it, is that the network's costs are met by the Commonwealth, which would fund approximately 30 per cent of the costs through grants, and by electricity consumers in the networks where chargers go in, who would fund approximately 70 per cent of the costs through distribution use of system charges. That is the network part of your bill.

The draft rule makes this possible by classifying the program work as standard control services. In the Commission's words, that classification allows for cost recovery from electricity consumers, and it says there is no viable alternative for this program because the last-resort and regional sites are likely to be uneconomic and the Commonwealth funds only 30 per cent.

Where a private operator takes a kerbside site, the picture is different. The only cost left with electricity consumers is site identification, and the Commission says that once the Commonwealth's contribution is counted, electricity consumers do not bear any costs for that part.

For the total, the Commission points to the department's own modelling, which estimated the cost to electricity consumers across all participating networks at around $97.2 million, made up of $85.4 million capital and $11.8 million operating spending.

The most useful change for households is one the department did not ask for. Its request did not provide for any cap. The draft rule adds one, by tying what networks may recover to a fixed version of the program guidelines, including the Commonwealth grant amount and the share of each cost type that can be passed through. The Commission's reason is the risk that without a cap the amount recovered from consumers could be significantly higher, for example if the Commonwealth increased the funding level or recovered a greater share of costs from consumers.

The number we asked for in August, for this program

In August we wrote about a separate proposal, from Energy Networks Australia, to let networks run kerbside charging as a regulated service generally, and argued that the case for making every customer pay rested on an emissions benefit nobody had quantified. That proposal is still being considered in the Commission's network regulation review, and the draft determination says this decision should not be interpreted as indicating a preference for a regulated or market-led approach in future.

For this narrower program, though, the Commission has produced a number. It calculated how many extra EVs each site would need to bring onto the road over the life of the charger for the value of the emissions saved to outweigh the cost to electricity consumers:

Breakeven: extra EVs needed per site

Network fast chargers in regional blackspots: 21 to 46 extra EVs over the 10 year life of the charger. The Commission considers this likely to be met.
Private operator kerbside sites: zero, because consumers bear no net cost.
Network last-resort kerbside AC chargers: 1.5 to 3.8 extra EVs. Here the Commission says We have not been able to conclude whether the breakeven point will be met.

Its doubts about the last-resort chargers are specific. Many of those sites are unlikely to have dedicated parking, the program limits networks to AC charging, and its literature review found limited reliable evidence of extra EV uptake from AC kerbside charging without dedicated bays. It supports proceeding anyway because, on balance, it considers the likely net benefits of the regional and private operator parts carry the program.

The objection on the record

A range of submitters opposed recovering costs from people who may not use the chargers. AGL, a retailer, put it most directly, arguing the approach would require all electricity consumers, including renters, low-income households, households that do not own cars and households that cannot afford EVs, to fund infrastructure that primarily benefits a narrower group of transport users. The Commission's answer is that the program is small, time-limited and part-funded by the Commonwealth, and that it is aimed at people who currently find EV ownership hardest: regional drivers and residents of apartments and other higher-density housing.

It also names a regional wrinkle. Customers on networks deploying regional blackspot chargers will be paying for this infrastructure, even though many users may be from other DNSP areas.

Our read

This is opinion, built on the documents above. At around a dollar a year the money is small, and the Commission has done what we said was missing in August: put a breakeven number on the emissions case. The cap is the part that matters most for households. A rule that let the program's funding share be changed later would have been a blank cheque drawn on network charges, and the department's own request did not close it.

The weak leg is the one the Commission itself flags. Last-resort AC chargers on streets without dedicated parking are the part of this program most likely to be paid for by people who never use them, and the Commission could not say whether they will bring enough extra EVs onto the road to justify that. If you rent an apartment and want a charger on your street, or pay network charges and doubt the case, that is the question worth putting in a submission. The Commission welcomes feedback on every element of the draft, and says it particularly wants views on the evidence behind its breakeven analysis and on whether enough networks will compete for the work.

How to have a say

Written submissions are due by 5 November 2026 through the "lodge a submission" function on the AEMC website, quoting project reference ERC0436. The AEMC publishes submissions, subject to confidentiality.

Sources

Australian Energy Market Commission, Draft rule determination: Facilitating EVCI under Commonwealth grants (ERC0436) (PDF, 24 September 2026, 86 pages, read 6 October 2026): the statement that the decision indicates no preference for future approaches (p. i); the breakeven figures and the "likely to be met" and "not been able to conclude" findings (pp. iii to iv, PDF pp. 5 to 6); zero net consumer cost for private operator sites (p. iv); cost recovery within participating network areas, the dependence on which networks win, and the $1.00 guide (p. vi, PDF p. 8); standard control classification and "no viable alternative" (p. vi); the cap and the fixed guidelines (p. vii and section 3); the questions the Commission most wants views on and the 5 November due date (p. viii); the program's timing and the Newcastle and Launceston footnote (p. 1); the 30 and 70 per cent funding split (section 1.1.1); the AGL quotation, the regional paragraph and the equity reasoning (p. 15); the $97.2 million estimate (p. 29); the absence of a cap in the request (p. 47).
Australian Energy Market Commission, Information sheet: Draft determination, facilitating EV charging infrastructure under Commonwealth grants (PDF, 24 September 2026, 2 pages): the $40 million program and the estimated 14,000 chargers by 2029.
Australian Energy Market Commission, AEMC rule change accelerates federal government's $40 million EV charging infrastructure rollout (media release, 24 September 2026): the final determination due by the end of 2026.
Australian Energy Market Commission, Facilitating EV charging infrastructure rollout under Commonwealth grants (rule change page, read 6 October 2026), with the notice under the National Electricity Law of 24 September 2026: the project reference, the 5 November 2026 submission deadline and the submission route.

Methodology. The draft determination was read from the AEMC's PDF on 6 October 2026, with its summary, chapters 1 to 3 and the breakeven appendix checked against the figures above; page numbers are the document's own, with PDF page numbers where they differ. Every quotation was checked against the source it is attributed to. The $5 total is our multiplication of the Commission's own guide and inherits its caveat. AGL is quoted from its submission as the draft determination reproduces it. We have not read the Commonwealth's draft program guidelines, so we make no claim about which networks will bid or where chargers will go. This is a draft rule; nothing in it is final. The "Our read" section is our analysis, honestly held, built on the sourced facts above and labelled as opinion.

See something wrong, or closer to this than we are? Request a correction and we will check it against the documents and log the outcome here.