New York Staff Proposes Acceleration in Switching Timeline

Staff of the New York PSC have proposed that the customer switching timeline for retail electric and natural gas customers be accelerated to five business days, according to an undated proposal filed yesterday in Case 98-M-1343 et. al.

"The accelerated switching process would allow customers to more quickly realize the benefits of their choice of commodity supplier, including energy-related value-added services or products, price stability and/or price protection," Staff said.

"For changes in electricity and/or gas supplier, where the customer switches between energy service companies (ESCOs) or between an ESCO and a distribution utility, the switch would occur 5 business days from the date the customer agrees to the switch," Staff said.

"In order to accelerate enrollment requests to occur within five business days of the customer agreement to change provider, we propose that the distribution utility effectuate a switch of supplier two business days from receipt of an EDI transaction requesting switches from the utility to an ESCO or from one ESCO to another ESCO. Similarly, in the event of a switch from an ESCO to utility service, the switch should occur five business days from the date of the request to the utility or from the ESCO EDI transaction if the customer request is made to the ESCO," Staff said.

"If the customer's meter does not have advanced or automated metering capability, the distribution utility will use an estimated meter read. The estimate will be adjusted to reflect the customer's actual usage upon the next meter read," Staff said.

"It is important that accelerated switching be addressed before the upcoming winter season. As such, the proposal is to implement these changes to become effective sixty (60) days of the date of a Commission order adopting accelerated switching," Staff said.