Broker Offers White Label Shopping Platform to Another State PSC

An online energy broker has offered to another state public service commission a white label version of its online shopping platform to improve the PSC's existing retail energy supply comparison charts and to allow enrollment onto competitive supply through the PSC website.

Choose Energy, Inc., which previously proposed its white label system to Ohio and Maryland regulators (see prior story), has now approached the New York PSC concerning the mechanism.

In a filing with the PSC, Choose Energy, Inc. said that the NewYorkPowertoChoose.com site, "is currently sub-optimally constructed to present a simple and engaging interface for the consumer."

"In fact, the argument can be made that once a consumer arrives at the NY PSC competitive sites, they may leave more confused than when they entered the site looking for simple facts," Choose Energy said. "And because of this confusion, the PSC is inadvertently supporting the incumbent provider. We do applaud the Commission's first step to providing a more clear comparison mechanism via Central Hudson and NFG, but we believe that the Commission's focus on improving the comparability and presentment of REP platforms should expand to the NewYorkPowertoChoose.com site for all zones throughout New York," Choose Energy said.

"[W]e at Choose Energy, Inc. believe that we can directly and immediately help with the enhanced education and consumer plan presentment by providing a white label product of the Choose Energy portal that would allow the REPs to actively manage their electric and natural gas campaigns within their own supplier portal, reducing time and redundancies from the current system. Additionally, by having the Choose Energy white label platform on the Powertochoose.com site, New York residents can migrate over to competitive suppliers ALL WITHIN the NY PSC infrastructure, providing an enhanced and secure end-to-end operation. The current process of clicking away to a website or calling into a number provided on the site is inefficient and results in lost competitive supply migrations due to the inefficiencies. With our platform, the consumer can easily sort plans and then enroll and be certain of the rate that they receive – which is not the case when the consumer has to dial a separate number or click away to a new website. The Choose migration capability is made possible by our end-to-end API and dashboard integration capability," Choose Energy said.

"Choose Energy believes that the Commission might benefit from an offer from Choose Energy to assist in the complete redesign and automation of the PSC electricity and natural gas supply site. We believe that both our timeframe and cost to accomplish these changes will be satisfactory to the Commission and would appreciate the opportunity to engage in further conversation or initiate a RFP," Choose Energy said.