The Commission issued Orders adopting electric and natural gas supplier licensing and bonding rules. The Commission made numerous revisions to the rule proposals in multiple proposed rulemakings since 2015, incorporating many of the suggestions submitted by NEM in comments.

Notable rule requirements are as follows:
1) New and current licensed suppliers must complete a Commission-sponsored Supplier Education Workshop;
2) Suppliers must institute a Privacy Protection Policy;
3) Licensed suppliers must file an application for Commission review every five years;
4) Licensees that have not yet begun serving customers must provide notice to the Commission three business days before beginning to solicit or market to customers;
5) Door-to-door sales representatives and agents shall present photo identification to customers as part of the solicitation process;
6) Licensed suppliers must maintain records of the identities of sales representatives and marketing agents, including photo identification, to be made available upon Commission request;
7) Licensees must provide notice to the Commission of the estimated start date when it will begin service to customers;
8) An affidavit must be provided to the Commission attesting that sales and marketing and regulatory personnel have been trained on the relevant provisions of the Commission's regulations; and
9) A supplier shall provide notice of default to its customers via the preferred method that each customer has selected to receive notifications, through written notice via electronic mail to the utility, and notice to the Commission.

The full texts of the Orders adopting the Electric Supplier and Natural Gas Supplier Licensing and Bonding Requirements are available on the NEM Website. The full texts of the rules will be posted when published in the DC Register.

The Commission rejected Pepco's proposal to deploy two public purpose microgrids. Pepco's filing stemmed from a condition of the Exelon-Pepco merger. The Commission rejected Pepco's filing because of the proposal to recover all $63 million in projected microgrid costs from its Maryland distribution customers without contribution by the Company, the developer, microgrid participants or the benefitting counties where the projects would be located. The Commission also noted the lack of metrics for a pilot study and definitive sunset date.

Pepco proposed to own the battery energy storage systems and microgrid controller components of the microgrids and also reserved the option of owning the distributed generation assets. NEM's comments argued this was contrary to state restructuring law. On this issue the Commission said, "[a]t present, we have yet to establish a state-wide regulatory framework under the PUA to govern the ownership and regulation of battery energy storage and other microgrid DER assets, including generation facilities. Whereas we deny the Proposal for cost recovery and other reasons, we do not take up the legal issue concerning Pepco's ownership of battery storage and, potentially, the DG components at this time."

Pepco's proposal was denied without prejudice, and it may file another pilot microgrid project proposal.

The full text of the Order is available on the NEM website.