Agenda

• Exploring the core tension in energy retail: customers want lower bills, regulators demand lower costs, and retailers are under sustained pressure to deliver both
• Examining margin compression, wholesale volatility, compliance burden and operational strain in a rapidly changing, increasingly regulated energy system
• Identifying practical steps, tools and support available to help energy retailers respond to current pressures and chart a viable path forward

• Investigating how consumers have lost trust in the promise of the energy transition as rising bills, complexity and uneven benefits reshape expectations of retailers
• Identifying useful ways to segment consumers in the messy middle of the transition, from disengaged billpayers to technology adopters, vulnerable households and flexibility-ready customers
• Unpacking barriers to engagement, including trust, complexity, perceived value and regulatory influence

• How can retailers and networks work together to reduce friction for customers as distributed energy resources reshape the system?
• Where can better coordination improve data visibility, connection processes, billing confidence and the customer experience?
• What new retail propositions become possible when networks are treated as partners in flexibility, shared renewables and smarter energy use?
• How should roles and responsibilities evolve so retailers can deliver more value without duplicating network functions or confusing customers?

• Understanding how the Australian Energy Market Commission's (AEMC) One Click Switch, Enhanced Hardship Customer Protections and other recent retail rule changes are reshaping retailer operations and customer expectations
• Exploring the operational, technology and process changes required to deliver faster switching, stronger consumer protections and improved customer experiences
• Analysing how retailers can embed new obligations while balancing implementation costs, operational efficiency, and competitive differentiation

• Unpacking the Australian Energy Regulator's (AER) consolidated Retail Guidelines, 2026–27 Compliance and Enforcement Priorities and increasing focus on fairness, transparency, and customer outcomes
• Understanding what "honest and fair" communication means in practice across pricing, billing, hardship, and customer engagement
• Looking into how retailers are moving beyond minimum compliance to strengthen governance, assurance, and customer trust

• Examining the consumer experience of transparency, fairness, and trust in pricing, billing, and communication
• Understanding the needs and experiences of vulnerable customers, including those facing hardship, payment difficulty, medical dependency, and geographic disadvantage
• Identifying opportunities to improve customer outcomes through accessible support, consumer empowerment, and more inclusive engagement strategies

• Retail operating model transformation and capability building to improve agility, reduce operational drag and support faster responses
• Scaling AI beyond pilots and into measurable business value
• Commercial models for flexibility, DER orchestration, and customer participation

• Looking into how retailers support vulnerable customers, including hardship, payment difficulty, medical needs, and geographic disadvantage
• Assessing compliance obligations and consumer duty expectations, and how regulation is shaping retailer behaviour and operations
• Identifying challenges in delivering consistent, scalable, and equitable vulnerability support across diverse customer groups

• How is the energy transition reshaping the purpose of retailers beyond selling electricity?
• How can retailers help customers adopt rooftop solar, batteries, electric vehicles and smarter energy use while building sustainable commercial value?
• What partnerships, incentives and market settings are needed for retailers to become trusted leaders in Australia’s clean energy transition?

• Understanding the size and growth trajectory of Australia's embedded network market as embedded networks rapidly become hosts for shared and centrally managed distributed energy resources
• Investigating the real experience of embedded networks for customers, property owners, stratas and property developers
• Reviewing the integration of solar PV, battery storage, and EV chargers into mixed use buildings
• Learning from regulatory signals and lessons in embedded networks that may indicate future changes in mainstream energy retailing

• Exploring how community-led energy projects are accelerating the energy transition through locally owned and shared renewable generation, community batteries, microgrids, and neighbourhood energy trading
• Examining the growing role of local councils, distribution networks, iwi, community organisations, and regional partnerships in developing energy solutions that deliver economic, social, and resilience benefits alongside decarbonisation
• Discussing the policy, financing, and regulatory changes needed to scale community energy across Australia and New Zealand, and what successful local projects can teach the wider energy sector

• Asking the long-term structural questions about the future of energy retail in a decentralised, data-driven system
• Considering whether retailers evolve into energy service providers, platform orchestrators or become partially disintermediated
• Drawing on system transition thinking and emerging frameworks shaping the next 20–30 years of energy market design
• Assessing the implications of the NEM review for electricity retailers in the future; in terms of the importance of risk management in a weather dependant system and the importance of coordination of distributed resources to minimise system cost

• Looking into how AI, digital platforms and automation are reshaping retailers from commodity suppliers into intelligent energy service providers
• Examining use cases across customer engagement, operational efficiency, forecasting, pricing and growth
• Addressing implementation barriers, including legacy systems, fragmented data, regulatory obligations and organisational capability constraints
• Modelling what the future energy retailer looks like in a decentralised system shaped by electrification, datacentres, and consumer energy resources

Terence Alvares is an operations, experience and transformation expert with significant energy experience. His last role involved stabilising customer operations following a significant billing incident at a major water utility.

• Managing the migration from fragmented legacy billing, SCADA, ERP and customer systems without duplicating data, losing history or undermining analytics
• Designing CRM architecture, governance and compliance settings that can integrate smart meter and IoT data while meeting energy regulation and privacy obligations
• Helping field workers, customer service teams and internal users embrace the new platform by reducing administrative burden and showing how agile systems create better customer and operational outcomes
• Looking beyond CRMs exclusively towards modernising technology and data foundations more generally

• Assessing why retailers continue to face low levels of trust despite playing an increasingly important role in the energy transition
• Understanding product design for consumer energy resources in homes and apartments, and how clearer narratives can improve customer experience and confidence
• Covering recent cybersecurity breaches in privacy, and how this impacts consumer confidence
• Discussing how retailers, regulators and networks can better communicate how different groups can participate in supporting the grid, and benefit from a more decentralised energy system

The Clean Energy Council is undertaking new research into how Australian households use of battery systems, what they expect from retailers, and how these behaviours are shaping the future of customer flexibility.

• Reviewing how households are currently using batteries and participating in flexibility programs

   

• Assessing the value being created today through self-consumption, tariff-responsive operation and VPPs

   

• Evaluating what additional consumer and system benefits could be unlocked through greater coordination of home batteries

   

• Analysing how retailers can design simple, transparent, and trusted flexibility products that customers are willing to participate in

• Understanding why fragmented home energy technology is limiting customer value and how integrated platforms are transforming residential energy management
• Showcasing how TOTEX Energy has developed an intelligent solution that brings together multiple home energy systems into a single customer experience
• Identifying the commercial opportunity for retailers to partner with next-generation energy technology providers to deliver lower bills, greater flexibility and improved customer outcomes

• Assessing how real-time wholesale pricing is reshaping the customer-retailer relationship and enabling more active energy participation
• Modelling how automation and consumer energy resources, including solar, batteries, EVs, and home energy management, help customers optimise energy use and reduce costs
• Scrutinising the commercial outcomes, customer behaviours, and adoption trends emerging from wholesale pass-through retail models
• Identifying what is needed to make customer-led participation in wholesale energy markets accessible, scalable, and mainstream

• Guiding customers toward right-sized batteries to build trust, avoid poor-fit installations and strengthen long-term retention
• Bundling batteries with retail tariffs and orchestration offers to create new revenue streams and improve customer value
• Leveraging growing residential storage capacity to support flexible demand, reduce peak exposure and deepen retailer participation in distributed energy markets

• Modernising retail technology to reduce cost-to-serve, improve speed to market and create a more responsive customer experience
• Streamlining operations to lift efficiency, protect margins and free teams to focus on higher-value customer growth
• Strengthening hardship support and retention programs to reduce churn, deepen trust and defend market share in a highly competitive retail environment

• Demonstrating how multi-site solar matching can turn distributed rooftop generation into a portfolio-wide retail proposition for charities, property groups, franchise networks and other C&I customers
• Exploring what half-hourly energy matching means for contract design, billing transparency, feed-in value, customer reporting and retailer differentiation beyond standard tariffs
• Assessing the commercial and operational implications for retailers as C&I customers seek to bring their own renewable energy into electricity contracts, reduce emissions and share value across multiple sites

• Evaluating how energy retail business models are evolving in response to rising customer expectations, market volatility, and the energy transition
• Considering which retail propositions are delivering measurable customer engagement, retention, and commercial success across the market
• Clarifying where innovation is gaining traction, where customer adoption remains challenging, and the lessons emerging from early movers
• Weighing the market, regulatory, and consumer conditions needed to support the next generation of energy retail

This full-day masterclass will equip energy retailers with practical communications, trust-building and reputation strategies for a market where customers are frustrated, policy expectations are shifting and the promise of the energy transition feels harder to explain. Participants will learn how to sharpen their core narrative, make complex messages easier to understand and build the internal and external alignment needed to communicate with credibility through the messy middle of the transition.

• Define a clearer and more credible retail story that connects customer value, affordability, fairness and energy transition realities
• Translate complex pricing, policy and product messages into language that customers, regulators, advocates and frontline teams can understand and trust
• Anticipate reputational risks, strengthen stakeholder alignment and respond more effectively when trust is under pressure
  

This masterclass is designed for senior leaders and teams working across customer strategy, marketing, communications, corporate affairs, policy, regulation, product, pricing, customer experience and stakeholder engagement. It will be especially valuable for those responsible for explaining retail value, managing customer trust, responding to public scrutiny or shaping how their organisation communicates through market and transition complexity.

Outline:

08:30 Registration and coffee 

09:00 Defining the core story

• Defining your core story to ensure your organisation is perceived as fair, transparent, and useful
• Framing energy as a service relationship rather than a billing transaction to strengthen trust and loyalty
• Translating complex pricing and policy into plain language so customers can understand, compare, and act with confidence
  
  

10:30 Morning tea 

11:00 Engaging stakeholders early

• Mapping customer, regulator, advocate, media, and frontline expectations to reduce surprise and improve alignment
• Building feedback loops to surface issues earlier and prevent small frustrations from becoming public complaints
• Involving internal teams in the message so communications are credible, consistent, and operationally deliverable
  
  

12:30 Lunch

13:30 Managing reputation proactively

• Anticipating friction points such as billing, hardship, outages, and tariff confusion to protect confidence before problems escalate
• Responding with speed, empathy, and clarity so the organisation is seen as accountable rather than defensive
• Showing visible follow-through on promises to reinforce reliability and turn reputation into repeated proof
  
  

15:00 Afternoon tea 

15:30 Making messages resonate

• Using customer-centred language that reduces cognitive load and helps people quickly see what matters to them
• Connecting every message to a clear benefit, such as lower stress, better understanding, or easier decisions
• Reinforcing trust so customers feel the system is working with them rather than around them
  
  

17:00 Concludes