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Without POR, Ohio Retail Market Order Contains Little Substantive Reforms
With the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio declining to order the electric utilities to implement POR (see related story today), the Commission's final retail market order contains few substantive reforms to the market.
Aside from POR, the Commission also found that the current utility-provided Standard Service Offer should remain the default service at present.
In the current environment, "eliminating the SSO and requiring customers to take service from various CRES [retail] providers could create customer confusion at this time," PUCO said.
PUCO did, "emphasize[] that, as noted by Staff, as customer awareness and participation increase, reevaluation of the default service mechanism may be warranted."
Also of note is that the Commission declined to adopt a recommended indicator of market health proposed by Staff which had provided that, "100 percent of the SSO load is procured via a competitive process for all EDUs in Ohio."
PUCO declined to adopt this metric, "in order to preserve the Commission's statutory authority pursuant to R.C. 4928.143(B)(2)(c), which provides that an electric security plan may include a nonbypassable surcharge for the life of an electric generating facility that is owned or operated by an EDU and dedicated to Ohio consumers."
The most notable change adopted by PUCO was adopting Staff's recommendation that electric utilities include on their bills the applicable CRES [retail] provider's logo, in the same size as the EDU's logo and in color if the utility logo is in color.
The Commission said that the cost of necessary billing system changes shall be addressed in each utility's next distribution rate case, finding that a fee imposed on suppliers is not appropriate.
Additionally, the Commission will "standardize" the Price to Compare across utilities; however, the Price to Compare, depending on the individual rate components (if there are generation charges that are not recovered solely through a uniform kWh charge) will still be customer-specific, in that the price will be derived by dividing the SSO "rate" by the customer's usage.
Moreover, rather than the actual bypassable rate for a billing period, the Commission ordered that electric utilities shall use, "a rolling annual average price-to-compare."
"To implement this rolling annual average, the EDU should calculate the price-to-compare by using the SSO rate for the previous 12 months and divide it by the customer's usage."
PUCO declined to separate supply and distribution charges in the bill in the manner recommended by Staff, but the new Market Development Working Group (MDWG) shall discuss various alternatives and Staff should propose a revised bill format for each EDU to reference supply and delivery charges once the EDU has divested its generation assets and moved to 100 percent market-based rates.
PUCO denied Staff's recommendation to make certain retail supplier customer and load data public, though parties may still petition for such data to be disclosed, which suppliers would then have a chance to protest.
PUCO found no further action is necessary requiring electric utilities to divest, on the basis that corporate separation may typically be achieved by structural separation from an affiliate accompanied by monitoring and structural safeguards. PUCO did order certain audits of utilities for compliance with affiliate rules
PUCO created the new Market Development Working Group (MDWG), "for the purpose of streamlining and aiding the development of Ohio's CRES [retail] market."
Among other things, MDWG shall analyze and propose policies and procedures for improving any information exchanges and competitive retail enhancements that would benefit development of the retail electric market.
One of these policies to be studied by MDWG is an operational plan for the purpose of implementing either a statewide seamless move, contract portability, instant connect, or warm transfer process.
"Once Staff has developed an operational plan, it should then file a Staff Report, with the operational plan, in a case with an EL-EDI designation. Staff should file this Staff Report not later than one year from the date of this Order. The Commission notes that the operational plan should generally recognize the Commission's preference for shopping customers to maintain their status as shopping customers, and if they must return to the SSO provider after a change in address, then for as short a period as possible," PUCO said.
At this time, PUCO declined to implement any mechanism to facilitate customer enrollment with retail suppliers in situations in which the customer does not have their account number with them (such as use of alternative information for enrollments or mechanisms to allow remote account number look-up).
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March 27, 2014
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Copyright 2010-13 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Karen Abbott • kabbott@energychoicematters.com
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