A report released today by the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) reflects the strong action taken by the Australian Government to bring down electricity prices.

The AEMC's 2018 Residential Electricity Price Trends Report finds that the electricity bill for a national representative customer has fallen by 1.3 percent from 2017-18 to 2018-19.

The AEMC expects prices to continue to fall, with the national weighted average residential bill to decrease by an average 1.1 per cent per year between 2018-19 and 2010-21.

The expected decreases in residential electricity prices are driven by a reduction in wholesale costs, with an increase in new generation capacity in the National Electricity Market (NEM) from 2017-18 to 2020-21.

Retailers are already reflecting this downward trend on prices through their retail offerings. Following the Liberal National Government demanding energy retailers to lower their power prices, they agreed to reduce their standing offers by up to 15% for half a million Australian families and small businesses, effective 1 January 2019.

This follows continued action by the Government to improve consumer outcomes, including through implementing key findings of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report, such as:

• leading on price reform by developing a default retail electricity price for households and small business to improve transparency and provide simpler price comparisons,
• putting in place strong policies to hold retailers to account, including strengthening the powers of regulators and preventing unreasonable late payment penalties, and
• launching the Underwriting New Generation Investments program to increase the level of firm capacity in the NEM.