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Pa. PUC Approves Assignment of Costs To Retail Suppliers For Gas Account Number Look-up Mechanism; Approves Eight Compliance Plans, Rejects One

July 1, 2016

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Copyright 2010-16 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com

The Pennsylvania PUC approved compliance plans to implement remote natural gas account look-up mechanisms at eight natural gas utilities, rejected National Fuel Gas Distribution Corp.'s compliance plan, and approved cost recovery from retail suppliers, via the purchase of receivables discount, at one of the utilities.

The PUC had previously directed utilities to implement, and established major design parameters for, remote account number access mechanisms, which will allow retail suppliers to obtain a customer's account number in situations where the customer does not have their bill handy (i.e. shopping mall kiosks, etc.).

Click here for background on how the mechanisms will work

In adopting several natural gas distribution company compliance plans yesterday, the PUC rejected several recommendations from the Retail Energy Supply Association, which the PUC considered to be re-litigation of issues previously addressed in a generic order. Among other things, the PUC rejected the use of the look-up mechanism outside of public venues (rejecting its use for door-to-door sales), and rejected RESA's call for the mandatory use of wildcards to reduce "NO HIT" or "MULTIPLE HITS" results

The PUC rejected the compliance plan of National Fuel Gas Distribution Corporation, ordering the submission of a revised plan

Among other things, the PUC said that NFGD failed to include in its plan the minimum required outputs for the account number access mechanism. The PUC had directed that the mechanisms must include, at a minimum, the following three responses: the customer’s account number, "NO HIT" or "MULTIPLE HITS."

"NFG has not made it clear how its mechanism will address scenarios in which the query either leads to a 'NO HIT' or 'MULTIPLE HITS' response," the PUC said

Furthermore, the PUC said that NFGD failed to provide a clearly defined proposal for cost recovery. In its plan, NFGD proposed to develop a rider that would allow for 50% of the account number access mechanism costs to be recovered from SATS [Small Aggregation Transportation Supplier Service] suppliers as a one-time charge, with the remaining costs recovered from Residential, Commercial, Small Volume Industrial Retail and SATC [Small Aggregation Transportation Customer] customers. NFGD further said that it did not have a specific plan at this time for how it would recover the retail suppliers' share of the costs, but suggested the possibility of an upfront assessment (prior to mechanism's development) to all currently active suppliers to help determine the level of supplier interest in the account number access mechanism. NFGD suggested that the mechanism would only be implemented upon sufficient supplier interest in paying the assessments

However, the PUC said that its directive to implement the account number look-up mechanism, "was not contingent on NFG’s proposed upfront cost assessment on NGSs [suppliers]."

The PUC approved the compliance plans as filed at PECO, Columbia Gas, Peoples Natural Gas, Peoples-Equitable, Peoples-TWP, UGI, UGI Central Penn, and UGI Penn Natural Gas

At PECO, the PUC approved PECO's proposal to recover 50% of implementation costs through its Purchase of Receivables (POR) discount, with the other 50% recovered through its Purchased Gas Cost (PGC) tariff rate

At Columbia, the PUC approved the recovery of implementation costs though existing nonbypassable Rider Customer Choice (Rider CC), which is billed to all Choice-eligible customers

At the Peoples LDCs, the PUC approved recovery of implementation costs through new riders applicable to all residential and small business customers (sales and transportation).

The UGI LDCs did not propose to recover any costs associated with implementation due to the de minimis costs and the PUC approved such approach.

The utilities were directed to implement the account number look-up mechanisms by December 31, 2016

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