This covers Ausgrid, the distributor for Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, the Central Coast and Sydney’s north and east. Essential Energy and Endeavour Energy run their own schemes under the same state framework, so the shape carries but the numbers here are Ausgrid’s.

What the scheme is

Ausgrid states it is required to maintain certain service levels under the Guaranteed Service Level (GSL) Scheme, the National Energy Retail Rules (NSW), the Electricity Supply Act 1995 (NSW), and associated regulations. If it misses those levels, a payment may be owed. It is compensation for a service standard being missed, not a refund of your bill and not a hardship payment.

Ausgrid says it will contact you: If you are the electricity account holder, Ausgrid will send you an SMS or email if you become eligible for a GSL payment. Worth knowing, and also worth not relying on, because the claim is still yours to make.

The two thresholds, and what they pay

For interruptions in the 2025-26 financial year, Ausgrid sets out two tiers. A customer must have experienced 20 total hours of interruptions or 10 interruptions in a single financial year to be eligible for a GSL1 category payment of $122.88. And 48 total hours of interruptions or 20 interruptions in a single financial year to be eligible for a GSL2 category payment of $163.36.

They are not alternatives. Ausgrid says a customer who exceeds the standard may be entitled to one GSL1 category payment and one GSL2 category payment, so a bad enough year can pay both tiers.

The rates rise next year. Ausgrid states that for outages in 2026-27 the payments have been increased to $127.92 for GSL1 and $185.62 for GSL2.

The exclusions, and the one that will catch most people

Counting your own outages will overstate your case, because several kinds do not count. Ausgrid excludes planned interruptions, and it excludes an unplanned interruption lasting less than three minutes, which removes the brief flickers that feel frequent but are not claimable.

The big one is the major event day. Ausgrid excludes outages that commence on one, and describes it this way: a major event day can occur when Ausgrid's network experiences significant disruptions or outages that exceed its reasonable operational limits. This can include interruptions caused by severe storms, bushfires, floods, or significant unplanned equipment failure.

Read that against how Hunter outages actually happen. The multi-day outage you remember, the one after the storm, is precisely the kind most likely to fall outside the scheme. The interruptions that build a claim are the unremarkable ones: the recurring afternoon dropout, the fault that keeps coming back to the same street.

Also excluded is an interruption from load shedding due to a generation shortfall or system operator intervention, from a failure or instability of the shared transmission system, from a request or direction from an emergency service organisation, or from a failure of another licence holder’s distribution system.

The deadline, and a discrepancy worth knowing about

Here Ausgrid’s two pages do not quite agree, so we are quoting both rather than picking one.

The Your Rights page says the claim must be made within three months of the end of the financial year (by 30 September each year). The claims eligibility page says that Under NSW Government regulations, the customer must apply for a claim within 12 weeks of the end of the financial year.

Twelve weeks from 30 June is about 22 September, not 30 September. We have not resolved which governs, and this page is not the place to guess. The safe course for anyone claiming is obvious enough: treat the earlier date as the deadline and lodge well before either. We have asked nobody at Ausgrid about it, and if the company clarifies we will update this page.

What happens after you claim

Ausgrid says it will notify the customer of the outcome of their claim within 12 weeks. If it is paying, the notice confirms the amount to be paid and the manner and timing of the payment. If it is refusing, in part or in full, it must give the reasons for the decision. That last obligation is the useful one: a refusal has to come with reasoning you can read and test against the exclusions above.

Two service levels almost nobody claims

The scheme is not only about outages. On streetlights, Ausgrid must repair faulty streetlights by the date that is agreed with an affected customer, and if it does not it must pay that customer $25.00 as compensation for the loss of illumination.

On connections, if Ausgrid agrees to perform a connection service under its Deemed Standard Connection Contract and misses the agreed date, it must pay $60 for each day that elapses from the agreed date until the date Ausgrid performs the service (up to an annual maximum amount of $300). For anyone building, that is a real number attached to a delay that is otherwise just frustrating.

How we made this

Every quoted passage is verbatim from Ausgrid’s own published pages, checked character by character and read on 23 August 2026. Amounts, thresholds and exclusions are quoted rather than paraphrased because each of them decides whether a claim succeeds.

This is general information about a public compensation scheme, not legal or financial advice, and it describes Ausgrid’s scheme only. The observation that the deadline is stated two ways is ours, made by reading both pages on the same day and linked below so you can check it; we have not contacted Ausgrid and make no claim about which statement governs. The remark that storm outages are the ones most likely to be excluded is our reading of the major event day definition Ausgrid publishes, and is labelled as such. Rates change each financial year, so check the source against the year you are claiming for.

Primary sources

  1. Ausgrid, Your rights and Guaranteed Service Levels (read 23 August 2026): the statutory basis of the scheme, the SMS or email notification to eligible account holders, that the levels cover unplanned outages, streetlight repairs and connection services, the $25.00 streetlight payment, the $60 per day connection payment to an annual maximum of $300, the entitlement to one GSL1 and one GSL2 payment in a year, the 12 week determination and reasons obligations, and the statement that a claim must be made within three months of the end of the financial year, by 30 September each year.
  2. Ausgrid, Guaranteed Service Level (GSL) Claims Eligibility (read 23 August 2026): the 2025-26 thresholds and the GSL1 payment of $122.88 and GSL2 payment of $163.36, the increased 2026-27 rates of $127.92 and $185.62, the exclusions covering planned interruptions, major event days and their definition, load shedding, transmission failure, emergency service direction and other licence holders' failures, the exclusion of unplanned interruptions under three minutes, and the statement that a customer must apply within 12 weeks of the end of the financial year.

Spotted an error, or claimed one of these and had a different experience? Tell us. Corrections are checked against the cited sources and logged on this page either way.