EnergyAustralia has received the largest ever penalty imposed under Australia's national energy retail law.

The Federal Court has handed down a $12 million fine to Energy Australia for failing to register people who use life-saving medical equipment that require constant power.

The company will also have to pay $300,000 in costs to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER), which brought the proceedings. 

EnergyAustralia admitted to not registering over 4,000 customers who were on life support machines between 2018 and 2020, failed to notify energy distributors of a similar number of customers, and failed to register more than 6,000 emergency phone numbers with distributors.

AER chairwoman Clare Savage said the $12 million fine should send a message to the industry to comply with their legal obligations and protect consumers who rely on life-support equipment.

“Life support obligations are critical to ensure that customers receive important protections under the law, including protections relating to continuity of energy supply and sufficient notice of any planned interruptions,” she said. 

EnergyAustralia admits that it “did not have adequate systems, policies and procedures to fully comply with the life-support rules” during the period in question, but noted that it came forth and reported the breaches itself.

“We want to assure customers that their safety remains our priority and we apologise to them for this error,” he said.

“We have investigated and not found any instances where customers had their power wrongfully disconnected or interrupted as a result of these breaches.

“We have fundamentally redesigned how we manage life support obligations, and since early 2020, have processes that record life support registrations and automatically notify distributors upon customer notification.”