Uniform Business Practices for Retail Access: Background

1
Uniform Business Practices for Retail Access
Background

• Jim Gallagher
• Chief, Retail Competition Section
• Office of Electricity and Environment
• New York Department of Public Service
• Albany, NY
• March 8, 2000
• jtg_at_dps.state.ny.us

2
What do we mean by Retail Access Business
Practices?

• Infrastructure of business procedures and rules
  underlying emerging retail energy markets
• primarily transactions between utilities and
  marketers
• embodied in Commission orders, tariffs, utility
  operating agreements, and legislation
• have been developed state-by-state, sometimes
  utility-by-utility

3
Business Practice Priorities

• Customer Enrollment Switching
• Access to Customer Information
• Billing Payments
• Supplier Licensing
• Creditworthiness
• Electric Metering
• Performance Stand. (e.g., billing accuracy.)
• Dispute Resolution

4
Three Key Aspects to Business Practice
Implementation

• Policy
• (e.g., should marketers be permitted to provide
  consolidated bills?)
• Business Practice
• (e.g., if yes, procedures for processing
  payments, handling consumer inquiries, etc.)
• Electronic Data Interchange
• ANSI x.12 transaction sets for data exchange

5
Marketer Concerns

• Rules are critical, and will dictate products
  offered, customers served, and markets entered
• Myriad of utility and state rules will impede
  development of competitive markets
• increase back office costs and prices
• increase regulatory time and expense

6
Impact on Customers

• Lack of uniform practices could mean
• fewer competitive suppliers
• potentially higher energy service costs
• headaches for multi-regional businesses
• Some concerns that increased uniformity could
  lead to loss of hard fought consumer gains

7
Impact on Utilities

• Lack of uniform practices will increasingly
  disadvantage utilities
• increased transaction costs
• competitive affiliates
• multi-jurisdictional utilities
• But new practices will require operational
  changes and possible system upgrades

8
UBP Efforts Currently Underway

• Within States
• National UBP Working Group
• EEI, CUBR, NEMA, EPSA , possibly AGA
• GISB (exploring options)
• NARUC

9
NARUC Resolution on UBP (November, 1999)

• Resolved
• NARUC supports efforts to achieve increased
  uniformity, with appropriate consumer
  protections, and
• NARUC and its member states are encouraged to
  participate in emerging national debate regarding
  UBP to ensure public interest is well served.

10
NARUC UBP Project (funding provided by DOE)

• Objectives
• identify, compare and contrast existing retail
  access business practices
• focus on practices, not policies
• build upon emerging national developments
• seek key stakeholder input
• recommend effective or best practices for
  consideration by state commissions
• final report from CAEM due July 2000