NY Seeks Comments on Requiring Provision of Aggregated Load Data To Registry To Be Used By Municipal Aggregators

The New York PSC has requested public comment on whether the large investor-owned utilities should be required to submit community-level aggregated data to a Utility Energy Registry (UER).

The UER could be used in planning and implementing municipal aggregations, the PSC noted

In the Public Service Commission’s Order Adopting a Ratemaking and Utility Revenue Model Policy Framework, issued May 19, 2016 in Case 14-M-0101 (REV Track 2 Order), the Commission called on the electric utilities to work with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to continue developing and updating NYSERDA’s contracted pilot project, the Utility Energy Registry (UER).

The UER is an online platform intended to offer streamlined public access to community-scale utility energy demographics. The UER is designed to collect aggregated data for electricity and natural gas, segmented by customer type and by zip code, in order to inform clean energy planning, implementation, and assessment of locally-defined, community-scale clean energy initiatives and to facilitate tracking of clean energy programs.

At this time, the UER has the capability to accept and report on the following data sets: aggregated monthly and annual customer counts and electric and gas consumption in MWhs and MMBTUs organized by the revenue class definitions (Residential, Commercial, Industrial, Public Street Lighting, and Public Authorities), broken down geospatially by tax districts or zip codes and community boundaries (cities, towns and villages) using franchise tax identification numbers. NYSERDA has indicated to Department of Public Service Staff that the UER prototype has been technically successful and has the capacity to accept additional data.

The PSC sought comment on:

(1) whether large, investor-owned energy utilities should be directed to populate and regularly update the UER, and

(2) what data should be included in the UER.

"In particular, commenters should focus on whether the list of data sets available in the UER should be expanded or modified, and specifically, what data would be necessary or useful to permit the UER to serve particular purposes, including, but not limited to, planning and implementation of Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) programs," the PSC said

Population of the UER would be subject to the 15/15 aggregation privacy policy adopted by the Commission

Case 17-M-0315