Update: New York ESCOs Formally Seek Technical Conference On Reset Order Implementation, Including Remaining Questions On Defining Small Commercial Customers, Fixed Price Cap -- EnergyChoiceMatters.com

Update: New York ESCOs Formally Seek Technical Conference On Reset Order Implementation, Including Remaining Questions On Defining Small Commercial Customers, Fixed Price Cap

April 13, 2021

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Copyright 2010-21 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com

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The New York State Retail Choice Coalition (“Coalition”) formally requested that the New York Department of Public Service Staff hold a meeting and provide a guidance document clarifying the requirements of the new rules and revisions to the Uniform Business Practices adopted under the December 12, 2019 retail market reset order.

"ESCOs seek clarification in order to ensure their understanding of the changes to the UBP and ability to comply with those requirements," the Coalition said

The New York State Retail Choice Coalition's intent to seek such a technical conference had been first reported by EnergyChoiceMatters.com last week (story here).

The Coalition last week had outlined specific topics for the technical conference, including remaining questions on how to define small commercial customers (see story here for details).

Another proposed topic for the technical conference is, for fixed-rate products, if the price is capped based on the historic utility average price at the time of enrollment, what happens if the customer executes a contract based on the then-existing utility average price and the utility updates its average price before the customer’s enrollment is processed, resulting in a fixed-price product that is higher than the 5% cap?

"Specifically, the Coalition believes the PSC would be well served to hold a technical conference with industry participants during an additional extension period and or provide additional written guidance to ensure that ESCOs have the necessary guidance to consistently implement the changes to the UBP adopted under the Reset Order. In the Coalition's April 7th Extension Request, Appendix A listed many of the outstanding issues that Coalition members are seeking to clarify in order to better comply with the December 12 Reset Order. We believe a conference to address these issues followed up with an official guidance document published on the Department's website detailing how an ESCO should comply on different commercial scenarios would be extremely beneficial to both the industry seeking guidance and Staff who expends a lot of time on answering questions directly for individual ESCOs," the Coalition said

"Of utmost importance, guidance is needed to help ESCOs navigate the regulatory certainty of which commercial customers are subject to the Reset Order as small commercial customers, and which may fit into an exemption and qualify for treatment as a large commercial customer (for example, guidance documents issued by Staff in 2016 stated that the aggregate annual usage of several small commercial entities all owned by the same customer may qualify for treatment as a large commercial customer)," the Coalition said

"One suggestion the Coalition has is for Staff to provide a commonly asked question and answer document on various commercial customer scenarios to try to provide clarity to industry. This is similar to what other highly regulated industries find on the New York Department of Taxation, New York Department of Financial Services and the New York Department of Health websites," the Coalition said

Case 15-M-0127

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