New York Clarifies Definition of Residential Customer Applicable Under ESCO Consumers Bill of Rights

The New York PSC has issued a rehearing order clarifying the definition of residential customer under the ESCO Consumers Bill of Rights.

Although the PSC's December 2010 order on the ESCO Consumers Bill of Rights had addressed several scenarios where a residential meter is associated with a non-residential account, and whether the ESCO Consumers Bill of Rights applies in such situations, the PSC said on rehearing that it did not address a situation whereby a large multi-family account is treated as a residential customer.

In this situation, the master-metered account holder generally has one utility account and is not a residential customer even though the units in the building house residential tenants, the PSC explained.

In light of this situation, the PSC said that the definition of "residential customer" and "current residential customer," as defined by the Home Energy Fair Practices Act, should be used in the application of GBL §349-d, including the ESCO Consumers Bill of Rights, and the Uniform Business Practices shall be modified to include these definitions.

Under HEFPA, Public Service Law, §11.2(a)(2) defines residential customer or current residential customer as, "any person who, pursuant to an application for service or an agreement for the provision of commodity supply made by such person or a third party on his or her behalf, is supplied directly with all or any part of the gas, electric or steam service at a premises used in whole or in part as his or her residence where: (i) the distribution utility's effective tariff specifies a residential rate for such service; provided, however, that no person who is supplied service to an entire multiple dwelling or for the common areas of a multiple dwelling as defined in the Multiple Dwelling Law or the Multiple Residence Law, shall be considered a residential customer solely because the distribution utility's effective tariff specifies a residential rate; (ii) such service is primarily used for his or her residential purposes and the customer has so notified the utility; (iii) the utility knows or reasonably should have known that any of such service is provided through a single meter to both units of a two-family dwelling, as defined in section 11.8 of this Part; or (iv) such person was a residential customer, as defined in the preceding subparagraphs of the same distribution utility within 60 days of making the request, was not terminated, disconnected or suspended for nonpayment, meter tampering or theft of services, and has moved to a different dwelling within the distribution utility's service territory so long as such person remains a residential customer as defined in the preceding subparagraphs."

Also on rehearing, the PSC confirmed its earlier ruling limiting a prepayment option to situations where the ESCO is the billing provider of a consolidated bill, which does not require the distribution utility to support processing customer prepayments to ESCO charges.

"However, if the ESCOs are willing to pay for the costs of utility billing system modifications necessary to allow for prepayments, they should request the Department of Public Service Staff to convene a stakeholder collaborative to discuss the complicated issues related to the collection of customer prepayments by ESCOs," the PSC said.