The importance of standardized utility rate data for energy innovation

In response to a recent twitter thread, I dug up an idea I proposed more than a decade ago about requiring utilities to release their rate structures in a standardized structured electronic format. I originally proposed this in my testimony to the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress on July 30, 2008 (Archived webcast).

Here is the key paragraph (in the context of ways information technology (IT) can promote efficiency):

IT also helps users manage data more effectively, particularly when data are released in a standardized format. For example, electric utility rates, which are now almost exclusively printed on paper, are difficult to manage for large companies with facilities in many states. The rates are complicated and they vary state-by-state and over time in unpredictable ways. If the federal government were to promote the development of a standardized electronic format for utility rates it would allow greater efficiencies in the design and energy management of facilities owned by multi-state and multi-national companies. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory tariff analysis project made a first pass at creating a database of such tariffs manually <https://energyanalysis.lbl.gov/publications/tariff-analysis-project-database-and>, but that’s a far cry from having such data released and updated automatically by each utility. A nice side effect of such standardization would be that web-based energy analysis tools could more easily evaluate utility bills for residential and smaller commercial customers as well.

And here’s the bullet point recommending action:

Second, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should be asked to assess the benefits and costs of promoting standardized electronic formats for utility rates.

Here’s how I described the benefits of this idea in a summary I wrote after the hearing:

The benefits of enabling such customer comparisons would be substantial.  Utility customers would save billions by choosing the tariffs most beneficial to them.  Utilities would face new pressure to rationalize their tariffs and align them with actual costs. The implications of discriminatory tariffs that inhibit adoption of new electricity technologies would become immediately apparent, and thus adoption of alternative generation and efficiency technologies would be accelerated. Finally, non-utility companies devoted to offering energy services at lowest total cost would gain a powerful new tool to help their customers.

Senator Jeff Bingaman approached me after the hearing about this idea and put me in touch with his staff person in charge of these issues (Alicia Jackson). I wrote up a few pages describing the idea and how to move forward. Ms. Jackson eventually drafted legislative language that made its way into one of the big energy policy bills then being considered.

Senator Bingaman is not in the Senate anymore and the big bill was never passed, but I remain convinced that this is an idea that could make a real difference. Key links are below.

My short writeup of the idea: “A proposal for standardized metadata formats for retail utility tariffs that will promote economic productivity, energy efficiency, and technological innovation”. PDF.  Microsoft Word 2016.

The 1 page draft legislative language in its most advanced form.  PDF.  Microsoft Word 2016.

My 2017 book, Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving, which talks about the uses and limitations of structured data for analysis and sharing of data (Chapter 39).

The Open EI project has an updated database of utility rates, but like all efforts before it, this database was created by scraping rate data from utility PDFs.

Whenever sanity returns to DC someone should take up this idea and run with it. I’m happy to share my thoughts with anyone who wants to take on this challenge.