Aurora Energy is a Tasmanian Government-owned electricity retailer in Tasmania, Australia. History Aurora was formed on 1 July 1998 under the Electricity Companies Act 1997 by the disaggregation of the Tasmanian Hydro Electric Commission (HEC), and is subject to the Corporations Act 2001. The company is wholly owned by the Government of Tasmania, with its two shareholders being the Minister for Energy (as the Portfolio Minister) and the State Treasurer, representing the State Government on behalf of the Tasmanian community. The disaggregated of the Hydro-Electric Commission resulted in the formation of three separate state-owned companies: Hydro Tasmania, which generates the power; Transend Networks, which transmits it across the state; and Aurora Energy, the retail arm, which sells and distributes it to customers. This was in anticipation of Tasmania joining the National Electricity Market (NEM), which took place in May 2005. A subsidiary company, Aurora Energy (Tamar Valley) Pty Ltd, trading as AETV Power, owned and operated the Tamar Valley Power Station in northern Tasmania using natural gas that was piped in from Victoria to generate electricity. On 1 June 2013, the power station, its customers and associated contracts were transferred to Hydro Tasmania. In late 2005, Aurora began trialling Aurora Pay As You Go, pre-paid electricity to selected areas of Adelaide. This system involved the Payguard meter, known as a smart meter. The official launch of the product, due to the success of the trial, went ahead in May 2007 making Aurora Energy the first electricity retailer to offer the pre-payment option in South Australia. This coincided with the 10-year birthday celebration of Aurora Pay As You Go in the State of Tasmania. In 2012, Aurora failed in its application to the Australian Energy Regulator for electricity price increases of 15.5% over the following 5 years for infrastructure investment and carbon tax implications. Instead, the Regulator limited the price rise to just 1.4% per year until 2017. One result of this was analysis of the current structure and subsequent re-structure of the business. Over the following years, a complete re-structure was undertaken, resulting in hundreds of redundancies throughout the business, from field worker level through to upper management. Retail contestability was introduced for very large customers in 2006, and in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2011, additional, progressively smaller consumers of electricity were opened up for competition with Aurora. In 2013, Aurora prepared for the introduction of full retail contestability, including