Staff filed proposed revisions to the Commission's retail electric competition rules. Notable among the proposals is to restrict customers eligible to shop to non-residential customers with monthly demand of 100 kW or more with the exception of allowing consumers to aggregate demand to meet a minimum aggregation threshold of 1MW. The proposed rules would also permit municipal aggregation for residential, business and municipal accounts. The proposed rules do not include a start date for competition. Under the proposed rules, utilities would be providers of Standard Offer Service and would be required to unbundle rates.

Staff's proposed rule revisions are in anticipation of a Retail Electric Competition Workshop scheduled for July 30th at the Commission's Phoenix office.

Staff requested that stakeholders file comments on the proposed rules this week. NEM filed comments recommending that the foundation of a successful retail electric market begins with the utilities exit from the commodity merchant function and competitive suppliers provision of energy and energy-related products, services, information and technologies to consumers. All consumers should be eligible to shop in the marketplace for energy as a result of an individual purchasing decision (outside of an aggregation). Default service pricing and utility delivery rate unbundling are critical to market transparency and informed consumer shopping. Rules should be designed to provide competitive suppliers with flexibility to make innovative product offerings and to rapidly respond to changing market conditions. Rules should also be designed to permit efficient and expeditious customer switching, streamlined and robust sharing of customer data, and customer-centric billing. These recommendations are addressed in greater detail below.

The full texts of Staff's Proposed Retail Electric Competition Rule Revisions, the Notice of Workshop and NEM's Comments are available on the NEM Website.

As required by Commission Order, the Supplier Consolidated Billing (SCB) Workgroup led by Staff filed a proposed SCB implementation timeline addressing the development and adoption of regulations; EDI standards; tariff filings; billing system programming and testing; customer education; and utility/supplier certification testing.

The Proposed Schedule is as follows:
Draft/Prepare Regulations - 9/3/2019 to 6/1/2020
Design Business Process - 9/3/2019 to 6/1/2020
Rulemaking Session(s) - 7/1/2020 to 9/1/2020
Regulations Published - 9/1/2020
Finalize EDI/XML Standards - 7/1/2020 to 12/1/2020
File & Accept Model Tariffs - 7/1/2020 to 12/1/2020
Regulations Final (Adopted) - 3/1/2021
Billing System Programming & Testing - 3/1/2021 to 5/31/2022
Customer Education Development - 8/2/2021 to 1/31/2022
Utility/Supplier Certification Testing - 6/1/2022 to 8/1/2022
File and Approve Customer Education Plans - 2/1/2022 to 8/1/2022
SCB Billing Start - 9/1/2022

The full text of the SCB Workgroup Filing is available on the NEM Website.

The utilities filed a proposal for Basic Generation Service (BGS) requirements to be procured for the period beginning June 1, 2020. The utilities propose to continue the use of a multiple round descending clock auction. The BGS-Residential Small Commercial Pricing (RSCP) auction will seek offers for the supply of full requirements tranches of each utility's BGS-RSCP load for a three-year period. Two thirds of the BGS-RSCP load for the June 1, 2020 - May 31, 2021 period was procured in the prior two auctions, and therefore, one-third of the utilities BGS-RSCP load will be procured for the period beginning June 1, 2020. BGS-RSCP bidders will be capped as to the maximum amount of tranches they can win for a particular utility as well as statewide. The BGS-Commercial and Industrial Energy Pricing (CIEP) auction will seek offers for the supply of full requirements tranches of each utility's BGS-CIEP load for a one year term beginning on June 1, 2020. The CIEP threshold is proposed to remain at 500 kW.

Notable changes in the proposal from last year's BGS auction process include: 1) the BGS-CIEP Auction and the BGS-RSCP Auction will be conducted separately but simultaneously; 2) to address increased RPS compliance costs, BGS-CIEP and BGS-RSCP suppliers will be required to transfer RECs and SRECs to the utilities after each of the first three quarters of the Energy Year, in an amount specified by each utility, or else provide collateral to cover any shortfall in the number of RECs or SRECs transferred.

The full texts of the Utilities Joint BGS Proposal and Company-Specific Addenda are available at this link.