In furtherance of the Commission's electric retail market investigation, and after convening a series of stakeholder collaborative workshops, Staff has filed its electric market development work plan.

To begin with, the Staff plan includes a proposed definition of "effective competition":

"*Participation in the market by multiple sellers so that an individual seller is not able to influence significantly the market price of the commodity.
*Participation in the market by informed buyers.
*Lack of substantial barriers to supplier entry into and exit from the market.
*Lack of substantial barriers that may discourage customer participation in the market.
*Sellers offering buyers a variety of competitive retail electric services."

Additional recommendations in the Staff work plan include:
1) Electric supplier data on market share should not be confidential;
2) Structural separation of utilities and their affiliates is sufficient. Full divestiture of generation should not be required.
3) Utility standard service offer should continue to exist as the default service, given the current state of customer education and knowledge of the retail electric market.
4) All electric utilities should offer a POR program.
5) An EDI Policy Working Group should be formed to prioritize EDI change requests and recommend EDI changes.
6) A plan to put a seamless move process in effect should be established.
7) Utility bill formats should be changed to such that the language references "supply" and "delivery" charges; the supplier logo should appear in the supply portion of the bill; and the utilities price to compare calculation should be standardized.
8) To facilitate customer enrollment, customers should have the ability to register on the utility website, without the use of their account number, and access their account information.
9) An investigation regarding the issues associated with supplier access to AMI data should be commenced. In the interim until "systemically beneficial time-differentiated rates" are offered by electric suppliers, utilities should offer pilot time-differentiated rates.

Comments on the work plan are due February 6, 2014, and reply comments are due February 20, 2014. The full text of the Staff Market Development Work Plan is available on the NEM Website.