Pa. PUC Approves Remote Account Number Look-up Mechanism With No Cost Recovery From Retail Suppliers

The Pennsylvania PUC approved National Fuel Gas Distribution Corp.'s amended compliance plan to implement a remote natural gas account look-up mechanism, with initial costs no longer recovered from retail suppliers

The PUC had previously directed utilities to implement, and established major design parameters for, remote account number access mechanisms, which will allow retail suppliers to obtain a customer's account number in situations where the customer does not have their bill handy (i.e. shopping mall kiosks, etc.).

Click here for background on how the mechanisms will work

In NFGD's initial plan, which was rejected by the PUC, NFGD had proposed to develop a rider that would allow for 50% of the account number access mechanism costs to be recovered from SATS [Small Aggregation Transportation Supplier Service] suppliers as a one-time charge, with the remaining costs recovered from Residential, Commercial, Small Volume Industrial Retail and SATC [Small Aggregation Transportation Customer] customers. NFGD said in the initial plan that it did not have a specific plan at such time for how it would recover the retail suppliers' share of the costs, but suggested the possibility of an upfront assessment (prior to mechanism's development) to all currently active suppliers to help determine the level of supplier interest in the account number access mechanism.

In its revised plan, NFGD proposed that, given the modest cost of developing the mechanism and the use of internal resources, it would not be seeking cost recovery at this time – but reserved the right to file a revised cost recovery plan should additional unforeseen costs emerge.

The PUC found this revised cost recovery proposal to be reasonable.

NFGD's amended compliance plan clarified that the mechanism will respond to queries that do not result in an account match or in more than one account match with "NO HIT" or "MULTIPLE HITS" responses, respectively, and that the response to invalid data provided in a query field will be to display the field contents in a different color than query fields with valid data. NFGD also clarified that the mechanism will allow the NGS to modify the incorrect query field and resubmit the query. The fields will also provide for NGS attestation that the enrollment occurred in a public location; an attestation confirming customer provision of photo ID; the type of ID provided; and an attestation that it has secured and retained a signed LOA.

Docket M-2015-2468991