Direct Access Parties Seek Report on Calif. DA Re-opening

Several direct access parties have petitioned the California PUC to release a status report on the Phase 2 and Phase 3 limited re-opening of direct access (R. 07-05-025).

The Alliance for Retail Energy Markets, Retail Energy Supply Association, and Direct Access Customer Coalition asked the PUC to provide a report on the results to date for the direct access six-month switching notices submitted in 2010 for Phase 2 service to begin in January 2011, and for the six-month switching notices submitted in 2011 for Phase 3 service to begin in January 2012.

The direct access parties noted that, at present, there is little public information regarding the results of the six-month switching notice process for Phases 2 and 3, or on the enrollment process for Phase 2.

A status report was compiled after the initial phase of the re-opening, which was released in August 2010.

The direct access parties said that they are not requesting an audit of the utilities' process for direct access implementation, as was included in the 2010 report. Rather, the direct access parties requested that the PUC provide a table listing, for each utility for Phase 2 and Phase 3, the number of customers submitting six month switching notices, the load associated with those submissions, the number of customers and the associated load that was rejected, and confirmation of the amount of time it took to fill the cap.

In addition, because of the timeframe for completion of the processing of Direct Access Service Request enrollments of new direct access customers for 2011 (Phase 2), the direct access parties requested a summary of that data as well.