9 January 2024: Victorian Energy Upgrades – Refrigerated Cabinets – Response to Consultation
Victorian Energy Upgrades - Refrigerated Cabinet Review | Engage Victoria
In July 2022, a discount factor was applied to plug-in refrigerated cabinets (RC). This removed incentives for these upgrades. The objective of the refrigerated cabinet review is to ensure these upgrades can be successfully re-introduced into VEU to deliver emissions and energy bill savings for participating businesses.
DEECA received 18 submissions from a range of stakeholders. These include VEU accredited providers, product suppliers and manufacturers, industry associations and a local government authority. DEECA would like to thank the organisations and individuals who took the time to provide feedback. This feedback was valuable to ensuring the revised activity will be fit-for-purpose once re-introduced.
DEECA has carefully considered all stakeholder feedback. The Response to Consultation details the key decisions made in response to stakeholder feedback. It includes:
- Introducing a minimum customer co-payment of $500 per new or replacement refrigerated cabinet.
- Introducing a decommissioning requirement for the RC activity, with new incentive calculations for replacement and new installations.
- Excluding products with a four-sided display area, following stakeholder feedback that these were poor-quality.
- Requiring some classes of products to be food-safe to ensure RCs are fit for purpose.
- Providing a transition timeframe to allow remote RC upgrades to continue.
- Not proceeding with several proposed changes. These include additional product warranties, limits on the number of refrigerated cabinets that can be installed, the exclusion of smaller volume RCs, and business eligibility requirements.
The department expects to publish updated regulations and specifications and re-introduce the RC activity into the VEU program by 1 July 2024.
Page last updated: 09/02/24