New York to Require ESCOs to Disclose Historic Pricing, Places Emphasis on Value-Added Services

New York ESCOs will be required to disclose their pricing history for certain products, the New York PSC said yesterday.

In a news release concerning measures adopted in an order in the PSC's review of the retail market, the PSC said that, "ESCOs will be required to file historic pricing information for products without energy-related value-added services for the Department to compile and publish."

A written order was not immediately available. The news release suggested that this requirement will apply to residential and small commercial customers, but absent a final order, we do not aver to its applicability.

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Additionally, the PSC said that its final order will ensure that, "ESCOs are held accountable for any instances in which their marketing and enrollment activities fail to satisfy requirements of the rules governing business procedures for ESCOs and utilities, known as Uniform Business Practices (UBP), regardless of whether the customer was solicited by an ESCO employee, contractor or third party."

Utilities will be required to implement on-line bill calculators for ESCO customers to enable customers to compare historically what they were charged by their ESCO as compared to what they would have paid if commodity service was obtained from the utility.

In addition to the instant changes to the retail market regulations, the Commission said that it will further investigate ways ESCOs can facilitate the development of energy-related value-added product and service offerings, such as residential energy-management services, demand-response programs and tools, and other types of energy efficiency measures for residential and small commercial customers.

Additional items to be further investigated include:

• Identifying ways for ESCOs to provide value-added services, rather than just provide reduced costs.

• Identifying changes to data access, billing policies and practices to facilitate development of value-added services.

• Identifying ways to streamline processing of ESCO enrollment requests.

Case 12-M-0476