Electricity Prices are Confidential Information?

One of the things with Redshift Wireless is that we want to help people save money on their electricity bill. This means getting access to the rates that people pay, so that we can work out about how much they are paying for electricity they use that we monitor. Sounds eminently reasonable to me.

The problem is actually getting access to this information. I decided to start with something easy. So I went to the Australian Government’s Energy Made Easy website. This web site could be useful in the future, but is a real disaster. Right now, it only contains pricing information from one Australian State, and a Territory or two. And it certainly will not give you access to the electricity prices in Australia’s most populous states.

Despite these shortcomings, we decided it might be fun to ask about licensing this information from them. The response we got was unfortunately interesting. It appears below.

Thank you for your enquiry submitted to the Energy Made Easy website (Tuesday 19 February 2013) in which you request the energy offer pricing information used by the website. Unfortunately The Australian Energy Regulator cannot supply this information to third parties given the conditions under which the offer information is provided to us by the retailers. We appreciate your interest but currently do not have plans to make the data available via an API or otherwise for integration with private applications or websites.

You have likely noticed this is covered in the privacy statement on the Energy Made Easy website (http://www.energymadeeasy.gov.au/privacy). Information protection requirements for information collected by the Australian Energy Regulator are also listed in the ACCC/AER Information Policy. (http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/846791).

Please also be aware that the information appearing on the website is covered by copyright and cannot be used for commercial purposes (http://www.energymadeeasy.gov.au/copyright).

This is not the type of response I was expecting from the body in Australia that is set up to assist consumers and competition! There are two responses to this. First, National Electricity Law authorizes the AER to release Confidential Information if it is in the public domain. If in fact electricity prices are confidential information, which I cannot see as being the case.

The other thing is that in the case of Telstra Corporation Limited v Phone Directories Company Pty Ltd it was found that a compilation of facts like a telephone directory without literary input was not actually covered under the Copyright Act. We are working with the AER to encourage them to acknowledge that this information is in the public domain and is not covered by copyright so that we can use it.