The energy sectors of Australia and New Zealand have undergone some of the most far-reaching commercial reforms of the twentieth century. The changes relating specifically to electricity deregulation have spanned more than a decade and continue to move at a great pace. In broad terms the effects of these changes have been:

• A highly competitive energy sector principally for commercial and industrial customers but now advancing to include residential consumers;
• The break-up of large vertically integrated government electricity organisations into multiple competing companies under separate management and requiring a commercial return;
• The completely separate ownership and operation of energy trading (retailing), distribution network (wires), transmission and generation businesses resulting in the need to make each facet of energy delivery economically viable as a stand alone enterprise;
• The establishment of a wholesale electricity trading market;
• Provisions for generation companies to sell directly to consumers; and
• Light-handed regulations based on the achievement of the Government’s reform objectives.

These reforms require the management of electricity companies to pay much greater attention to:

• Significant value-added customer service and marketing initiatives;
• Understanding asset and works management, asset life cycle planning, reliability and opportunity based maintenance to obtain efficiencies, reduce costs and maintain returns on investment in a fully competitive arena;
• Outsourcing of non core business functions and services;
• Developing complex energy tariff structures incorporating ½ hourly tariffs provided 365 days/year; and
• Real-time integration of information and work flow from previously disparate systems such as CIS, GIS, SCADA, outage management, asset management and network planning.

TVD’s products have been developed in response to this environment and therefore embody the business processes which have been developed, refined and proven for deregulated utilities. One of the primary advantages of TVD’s products and services is to provide both competitive advantage and resolving business issues resulting from deregulatory pressures as they arise. In many cases these issues only become apparent at certain points in the deregulation cycle.