Essential Energy builds, operates and maintains a vast and diverse electricity network, providing a vital service to more than 900,000 customers across regional, rural and remote communities.

Delivering safe and reliable electricity to our customers is the core of what we do. We focus on employee, contractor and community safety, as well as the reliability, security and efficiency of the network.

We work to keep downward pressure on our customers’ network charges while delivering a satisfactory return on capital employed.

As the energy sector transitions to more renewable energy generation, we too are transforming. Through innovation and technology, we are actively providing benefits to our customers and communities by supporting the energy transition and enabling connections of renewable energy and consumer energy resources to the network. We are also training the workforce of tomorrow so our people can inspire and support the network as it evolves.

The electricity poles and wires that line our streets and roads deliver the energy that powers homes, hospitals, schools and businesses. This infrastructure can also enable communities to generate, share and store their own electricity.

Our network area covers 95% of New South Wales and parts of southern Queensland, traversing 737,000 square kilometres of diverse landscape from desert to coastal, and alpine to sub-tropical.

Building the network of the future will empower communities to drive economic growth in regional, rural and remote NSW.

The location of our network and our customer base shapes how we service them. We have about one-third the number of customers per kilometre of powerline compared with the average customer density across the National Electricity Market, due to our network’s vast geographic footprint and absence of population-dense urban areas. This means we need more poles and wires to reach each customer, which increases service costs. Sparsely populated networks also present unique logistical and economic challenges to achieve reliability and service quality targets.

Our values inform our decisions and guide the way we work, including how we treat our customers and each other. Our employees are enabled and encouraged to uphold our values: make safety your own; be easy to do business with; make every dollar count; be courageous, shape the future; and be inclusive, supportive and honest.

Essential Water, part of our Operations, People and Safety division, services approximately 18,000 people in Far West NSW. Secure water supply is delivered to approximately 10,500 customers in Broken Hill, Menindee, Silverton and Sunset Strip, as well as rural customers. Reliable sewerage services are provided to approximately 9,700 customers in Broken Hill. The Essential Water network includes dams, reservoirs, pumping stations, treatment plants and pipelines.

Intium, a wholly owned subsidiary of Essential Energy, was incorporated in January 2023, to provide innovative energy solutions that support Australia’s transition to net zero. Intium focuses on business customers across Australia, pursuing emerging and complex energy services.