FERC Grants ConEd Request To Correct Meter Data (UFE), Some ESCOs To See Lower Bills

Original Erroneous Data Had Resulted In Lower Bills For ConEd, Higher Bills For Some ESCOs

July 23, 2019

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Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com

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FERC granted a waiver sought by Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. to allow ConEd to correct metering data for April 2018 beyond the 130-day period prescribed in the tariff

As previously reported by EnergyChoiceMatters.com (see details here), on January 11, 2019, ConEd had filed a request for a limited one-time waiver of section 7.4.1.1.4 of the New York Independent System Operator, Inc. (NYISO) Market Administration and Control Area Services Tariff (Tariff), which requires a meter authority to provide any final updates or corrections to metering data within 130 days from the date of the initial invoice. ConEd sought the waiver of Tariff section 7.4.1.1.4 so that it can correct metering data for April 2018 beyond the 130-day period.

ConEd has said that the waiver is necessary to remedy errors in ConEd’s calculation of Unaccounted for Energy ('UFE') during the April 2018 billing period. ConEd had stated that new code in its Transmission Owner Data Reporting System (TODRS) was not accurately aggregating the metering data for all ESCOs

As described by Direct Energy in comments to FERC in support of ConEd's request, the errors, "resulted in inflated and incorrect wholesale energy bills for LSEs in ConEd’s service territory."

As described by FERC, "Con Edison explains that it recently started migrating new computer code to its Transmission Owner Data Reporting System (TODRS), with the goal of enhancing the reporting and accuracy of energy consumption and summer peak load contributions by recognizing the accounts with Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) meters installed and speeding up the processing time of loading interval data in the TODRS. Con Edison states that, on July 13, 2018, during the submission of the April 2018 four-month true-up energy report to NYISO, it noticed a larger than average difference between the total amount of Con Edison’s service territory demand and the total aggregated demand from customer meter data. Con Edison explains that it started investigating this issue immediately but was not able to identify the underlying error in TODRS’ meter data aggregation process until the first week of October 2018, after NYISO’s challenge period end date of October 1, 2018 for any changes to the April 2018 LSE closeout bus metering data."

ConEd has noted that, while a few LSEs (including ConEdison) received lower energy bills for April 2018 due to the error, the rest of the LSEs received higher energy bills, and such LSEs will experience a decrease in their NYISO bill if the waiver is granted.

FERC said that ConEd's petition meets the criteria for granting a waiver.

"First, we find that the error by Con Edison affecting the April 2018 bus metering data was made in good faith, as it was the unintentional result of a computer error. As soon as Con Edison discovered the discrepancy, it worked to address the problem. As explained by Con Edison, because the problem was caused by a computer software error, it took time to identify and correct the error, which resulted in Con Edison missing the correction deadline for the April 2018 LSE bus metering data. Second, the waiver is limited in scope because Con Edison requests to have the LSE energy report re-submitted and resettled only for April 2018. Third, the waiver request addresses a concrete and discrete software problem that has already been fixed. Con Edison states that it has also implemented preventative measures to minimize the chance of such errors in the future," FERC said

"[W]e find that the requested waiver does not have undesirable consequences because granting the waiver will allow Con Edison to submit corrected data to NYISO, which can then resettle bills for April 2018 and bill LSEs for the corrected amount of energy their customers actually used. While the overall impact of resettling the invoices will result in some customers seeing increased bills as a result of the invoice re-settlement, they will be paying for the energy they actually used at the rate specified in the Tariff. Further, section 7.4 of NYISO’s Tariff provides sufficient notice to customers that finalized metering data could be subject to further correction by the Commission upon an application for 'redress' submitted to the Commission outside of the otherwise applicable time bar," FERC said

"Accordingly, we grant Con Edison’s request for a limited, one-time waiver of section 7.4.1.1.4 of NYISO’s Tariff in order to permit NYISO to use corrected metering bus data for April 2018 and issue corrected invoices for that period," FERC said

Docket No. ER19-814

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