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NYSEG, RG&E to Table Proposal for Remote Access to Customer POD IDs
January 24, 2012
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Copyright 2010-
New York State Electric & Gas Corporation and Rochester Gas and Electric Corporation said that they would table the proposed program to provide customers with remote access to their POD IDs, with no intention to revisit it, due a lack of interest and funding commitment by ESCOs (98-M-1343).
NYSEG and RG&E's proposal, as accepted by the PSC and which was contingent on ESCO funding, would have relied on the utilities' Interactive Voice Response system to provide customers with their POD IDs. Moreover, the program accepted by the PSC was for a customer tool, not an ESCO tool, to be available to all customers.
This latter point led to the disinterest among certain ESCOs, which balked at funding a program that would be available to non-funding ESCOs who market to customers at various remote locations at which customers would make use of the POD ID look-up tool.
Cost of the program was estimated at $97,400.
NYSEG and RG&E surveyed ESCO interest in the funding the program. Of the 67 ESCOs, 31 responded and 36 ESCOs did not respond to the utilities' request for an e-mail regarding interest in the program. The ESCOs that did not send an e-mail were considered by the utilities to have no interest in the program.
Of the 31 respondents, 22 stated that they were not interested in committing funds to the project. Nine ESCOs responded that they would be willing to contribute toward the development of the IVR-based and web-based solution. There were two responses where two ESCOs, owned by the same parent, responded jointly. "As a result, while nine ESCOs responded in the affirmative, only seven ESCOs offered financial support," NYSEG and RG&E said.
Regarding the nine ESCOs willing to contribute, the maximum contribution ranged from $1,500 to $19,480. The total amount that the ESCOs were willing to contribute summed to $44,980, the utilities reported. This amount is $52,420 short of the projected cost of the program and less than half of the overall cost.
"Based on the expressed lack of interest and the lack of consensus, it appears that there is no workable solution and the Companies hereby table the Program with no intention to revisit it," NYSEG and RG&E said.
Notably, NYSEG and RG&E said that, "The idea of free-ridership was clearly detestable to most ESCOs; they quite simply did not want to contribute money toward a project and have someone else who did not contribute be able to use it."
Email This StoryCopyright 2010-
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