Maryland Choice Workgroup Report Recommends Information, Not Promotion

The Maryland Consumer Education and Customer Choice Workgroup (PC 25), tasked by statute with developing an electric choice education plan, has filed a final report with the Maryland PSC which finds that the primary purpose of any PSC efforts should be to inform customers about electric Choice, "not encourage or direct customers to make a choice."

The working group's final report recommends development of a comprehensive educational campaign centered on the overhaul of the current Maryland Public Service Commission website, and replacing it with the materials and resources developed by the working group.

Included is a new supplier offer page that replaces the current upload solution available on the Commission's website, whose creation was driven by a statutory deadline. In addition, the work group proposes several other offline educational efforts designed to draw attention to the availability of choice.

The material developed by the workgroup is intended to:

1) educate consumers to help them better understand that they have a choice when it comes to electricity supply,

2) explain what those choices are,

3) answer key questions about how to select a competitive supplier and,

4) provide a quick and easy resource for comparing supplier offers.

The materials and recommendations contained in the report do not direct or encourage consumers to switch suppliers.

For the overhaul of the supplier offer webpage, the workgroup recommends a standard set of data points to be provided by all participating suppliers with active offers on the site for residential customers. Unlike the PSC's current solution, all active supplier offers should appear on a single webpage (one page for each utility territory in which the supplier is active) so that customers have the ability to make side-by-side comparisons of various supplier offers.

Customers would be able to sort the list of offers based on preset criteria, and the webpage would allow customers to see estimates of their monthly electricity supply charges at various usage levels for each available offer.

The standard data points which would comprise the fields of the offer chart would be Supplier Name; Price Per kWh; Pricing Plan Type (fixed/variable); Introductory Offer (yes/no); Contract Duration; Renewable Content, Cancellation Fee; Other Fees; and Other (space for special terms such as gift cards, rewards, etc.). A final field would be the estimated monthly cost of each offer based on a user-inputted usage; it appears that the calculation would be automatic and that the supplier would not have to provide this information when listing the offer.

Based on the work group report and a sample of the recommended supplier offer chart, it does not appear that suppliers charging a non-volumetric fee (a monthly customer charge, for example) would be required to include this fee in listing the Price Per kWh. As indicated above, there is a field for "Other Fees," but the example in the work group report only lists whether such an additional fee is present (yes or no), and does not list the exact amount of any additional fee not in the volumetric price, though it is unclear if this is meant to indicate that the amount of Other Fees would not be required to be listed.

Also notable is that the example offer chart provided in the report does not list the amount of any early termination fee under the Cancellation Fee field, and only lists yes/no for the presence of a fee in the example offers. As statute requires the reporting of "any cancellation fees," it would appear that the specific fees would have to be listed in the chart, and their omission in the sample chart should not be interpreted as that the fees will not be listed on the chart.

The utility's Electricity Supply Cost (in $/kWh) would appear at the top of the supplier offer webpage, but would not appear in the sortable offer chart itself.

The work group recommended that the supplier offer list initially open with supplier names in alphabetical order from A- Z, and that the supplier's name include a hyperlink to that supplier's website. The supplier's name field would also include a link to the supplier's Terms and Conditions for the product described.

Each supplier would be permitted to post a maximum of five offers for each regulated utility service territory under the working group's recommendation.

The work group did not recommend inclusion of small commercial offers on the price chart at this time.

In addition to the choice website, the work group recommended offline education efforts largely focused on driving customers to the choice website for information. These offline recommendations include conferences, workshops, and in-person events where customers could interact with suppliers and PSC Staff, as well as brochures driving customers to the website. The work group endorsed Public Service Announcements but did not develop one due to costs; the work group recommended taking advantage of any free opportunities to educate customers about choice through local news broadcasts and other interview opportunities.

The work group recommended that funding for the education plan should be collected though the Commission's assessment on regulated and licensed companies; specifically, the assessment should be collected from all electric utilities and suppliers.