Introducing the Lived Experience Panel

    Central to our mission is the formation of a Lived Experience Panel. This diverse group includes community members who have faced the challenges of power outages firsthand. By incorporating their insights and experiences, we aim to guide the development of our initiatives and ensure that our solutions are grounded in real-world needs and perspectives. Their voices will be invaluable in shaping our approach and outcomes.

    #BetterTogether Collaborators

    We're thrilled to be collaborating with those with lived experience, consumer and energy collaborators in our Community Outcomes Group as well as Energy Charter Signatories leads AusNet and Endeavour Energy to help communities increase their energy resilience to cope and recover from extended power outages.

    Community Energy Resilience

    The importance of greater community energy resilience

    Our changing climate means more frequent and extreme weather events and severe storms. This leads to more incidents that can increase the risk and duration of power outages.

    Many people, including those in vulnerable circumstances, are unaware and unprepared for extended unplanned power outages, particularly during extreme weather events. There is an opportunity to help customers and communities increase their community energy resilience to cope and recover from extended power outages, including managing their health, safety, and personal & financial wellbeing.

    What is the initiative?

    This #BetterTogether Community Energy Resilience initiative aims to create greater energy resilience among communities to assist with preparing for and recovering from extended power outages. This initiative plans to address this opportunity by:

    • Establishing a Lived Experience Panel to help inform and guide the initiatives outputs
    • Co-developing a black-out plan that empowers customers to effectively prepare for black-outs in extreme weather
    • Launching a national campaign to encourage Australians to complete black-out plans including support resources for diverse audiences
    • Co-developing and establish behavioural insights enquiry project to learn more about what customers are and are not doing to prepare for black-outs and why.
    Community Energy Resilience Map + established Lived Experience Panel + established COG
    Co-developed black-out plan template + online, hard copy and other access points + easy-to-use process guide
    Co-developed campaign assets for diverse audiences + co-developed national campaign launched across Australia
    Co-developed behavioural insights enquiry project + engagement of a broad range of customers into research
    Aug 2024
    Oct 2024
    Nov 2024
    Dec 2024

    Insights for this #BetterTogether initiative in creating greater community resilience in the face of extreme weather events has additionally been informed by:

    Who is collaborating on this initiative?

    Customer + Community Outcomes Group

    Members will be confirmed once the stakeholder mapping is completed in August + September 2024.

    Energy Industry Collaborators

    AusNet (lead), Endeavour Energy (lead), and Ausgrid, Essential Energy and SA Power Networks.

    Community of Practice – Resilience (completed)

    This #BetterTogether initiative started as the Resilience Community of Practice which created a platform to share knowledge, learnings and better practice examples to collectively build professional skills and organisational capability to support individual customers and communities to better plan for, and respond to, disaster events.

    The Community of Practice Resilience Resource Library can still be accessed, which includes session recordings and additional resources.

    Want to learn more about this #BetterTogether initiative?

    If you would like to learn more about the #BetterTogether Community Energy Resilience initiative, or join the Community Outcomes Group, please reach out to Bec Jolly, Director, Energy Equity.

    Contact Bec