 | |
| Company type | State Owned Enterprise |
|---|---|
| Industry | Electricity |
| Founded | 1918 |
| Headquarters | Melbourne, Victoria |
Area served | Victoria |
Key people |
|
| Website | secvictoria |
The State Electricity Commission of Victoria (SEC, SECV or ECV) is a government-owned electricity company in Victoria, Australia. Originally established to generate electricity from the state's reserves of brown coal, the SEC gradually monopolised most aspects of the Victorian electricity industry, before being broken up and largely privatised in the 1990s. After several decades of dormancy, it was revived in 2023 to invest in renewable energy and storage markets.
A 1918 act of the Victorian Parliament appointed a board of Electricity Commissioners to investigate the feasibility of exploiting the substantial brown coal deposits in the Latrobe Valley. The Commissioners, soon renamed the SEC, constructed the first of many power stations at Yallourn, entered the distribution and retailing businesses, and gained regulatory powers over the electricity industry. By the 1970s, the SEC held a virtual monopoly over the entire Victorian electricity system. Beginning in the early 1990s, the SEC's businesses and assets were broken up and privatised, while its regulatory functions were taken over by other government agencies. A shell entity remained to administer residual assets and liabilities, and to manage a small number of government-subsidised power contracts.
During the 2022 state election campaign, the Victorian Labor Party led by Daniel Andrews pledged to revive the SEC as a participant in the deregulated National Electricity Market. Following Labor's victory at the election, an initial $1 billion investment was allocated in the 2023–24 state budget to new state-owned company SEC Victoria. A series of legislative reforms introduced in late 2023 will, if successful, entrench a mandate in the Victorian Constitution for the new SEC to act as a renewable energy provider, and restrict its abolition or privatisation without a special majority of the Parliament.