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Texas PUC Staff File Draft Legislative Recommendations For Scope of Electric Competition Report

December 12, 2016

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Copyright 2010-16 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Karen Abbott • kabbott (at) energychoicematters.com

Staff of the Public Utility Commission of Texas has filed an updated draft of the electric scope of competition report, which, for the first time publicly, includes a discussion of draft recommendations that the Legislature may wish to consider.

Staff's draft addresses only a single issue under legislative recommendations, concerning logistics of identifying electric customers of REPs who are eligible for certain consumer protections under the substantive rules who were previously identified by their status as eligible for the Lite-UP Texas program, which has been discontinued with exhaustion of the System Benefit Fund.

Staff's draft noted that in 2015, HB 1101 required that all remaining funds in the System Benefit Fund (SBF) be expended, that the fee that funded the program as a nonbypassable surcharge on electric bills be set at zero, and that the SBF be sunset on September 1, 2017. Per the provisions of HB 1101, the SBF fee was set at zero in September 2016, concluding the funding for the program.

Moreover, the sunset of the SBF program also concluded the relationship between the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) and the PUC, in which the HHSC provided to the PUC eligible electric customers for the SBF low-income discount.

Because of the termination of the relationship with HHSC with the termination of the SBF, the PUC will no longer be able to determine an electric customer’s eligibility for other low-income programs, such as late penalty waivers and the option of paying an electric deposit over multiple months.

Staff's draft noted that the Legislature may wish to consider allowing low-income customers access to low-income programs such as the late penalty waivers and the option of paying an electric deposit over multiple months. The draft offers four possible approaches in which the Legislature could continue these low-income programs:

(1) Authorize HHSC to provide identification of eligible low-income customers to the PUC;

(2) Require retail electric providers (REPs) to provide such low-income programs using the Low Income Discount Administrator’s (LIDA) Telecommunications Lifeline Service Program list to identify low-income customers;

(3) Require REPs to offer such low-income programs, with customers self-enrolling and REPs verifying income eligibility; or

(4) Allow REPs to voluntarily provide such low-income programs at their own discretion.

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