Lack of Easy Data Access Comes Back to FERC

In October 2008, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a groundbreaking order—Order No. 719—designed to enhance wholesale market competition by encouraging the participation of demand response (DR) by aggregators of retail customers (ARCs) into wholesale energy markets run by regional transmission organizations (RTOs). FERC further reduced remaining barriers to DR participation in wholesale markets with the issuance of Order No. 745 in 2011. With varying levels of success in DR participation in response to these two orders, FERC took an additional step in 2020 with the issuance of Order No. 2222. This order directed RTOs to expand opportunities for distributed energy resources (DERs), including DR, in RTO markets. At the core of each of these orders is an effort by FERC to “remove barriers to the participation of distributed energy resources” in markets operated by RTOs to enhance competition and reduce market prices.

While FERC has authority over RTOs and the wholesale market, its authority does not extend down into the states, which maintain authority over retail customers and distribution utilities. This distinction is important because in order to facilitate DER and DR participation in wholesale markets, ARCs need timely access to customer energy-usage data—access that distribution utilities control and that is subject to state oversight. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.

Customer energy-usage data shows how much energy a location or premise uses during a specified period based on the capabilities of the metering infrastructure in place. With advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), this data can be used for something as simple as sending a bill to a customer for usage on a monthly basis, determining how much a customer may save if they install rooftop solar, or a settling with an RTO showing the total customer response to market prices. If an ARC cannot get this information in a state, then it cannot participate in those wholesale markets—and ARCs are routinely unable to access this necessary data.

This issue was recently highlighted in a complaint filed by Voltus and Mission:data at FERC against PJM (the RTO for the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States). While the requested relief focuses on changing a PJM rule to allow statistical sampling to meet PJM’s requirements for settling DR performance, the complaint is really about states failing to implement adequate data access policies at the retail level.

To participate in the PJM marketplace, aggregators of end-use customers—or “curtailment service providers” (CSPs), as they are called in PJM—must meet a series of requirements. One of these is that if a CSP participates in a PJM market product, it must provide certain information about its aggregated product, including names, account numbers, and usage data for those customers that make up the aggregated product. If the CSP bids in its aggregated product and is called by PJM, then it is expected to produce the bid (i.e., reduce demand) and provide evidence of its reduction through meter data, such as from AMI. The problem is that getting that AMI data is complicated, if not impossible, across the PJM footprint.

Voltus, a CSP that works with residential customers, “aggregates curtailment by residential customers using these smart devices to deliver both demand response capacity and ancillary services value to PJM.” In order for Voltus to participate in PJM markets, it needs access to interval data generated by AMI; however, either the distribution utilities do not provide access to that data or “the requirements are so impracticable as to in effect amount to an inability to obtain data.” In its place, Voltus proposes to use statistical sampling to meet the PJM tariff’s accuracy requirements.

Source: Complaint of Voltus, Inc. and Mission:data v. PJM Interconnection, LLC under EL26-4.

This summary from the Voltus complaint shows the level of AMI deployment and the general inability of an ARC to get meter data from the utility. An asterisk next to the name of a utility denotes that sharing of customer data is limited to the utility and a customer’s competitive supplier. In other words, there are no procedures in place to allow an ARC to access customer data.

This is not the first time the inability of a market participant to access customer energy-usage data has come before FERC. In 2024, CPower, an ARC or CSP, filed a similar complaint against PJM. In that instance, CPower was also unable to get access to customer usage data from the relevant distribution utilities and sought a modification to the PJM rules to allow statistical sampling where AMI data was unavailable. While FERC denied CPower’s complaint, it did note the importance of data access. In a separate statement on the decision, Commissioner Judy Chang noted, “I am concerned that metered interval data are often difficult or impossible to obtain for third parties interested in deploying demand-side resources, which highlights a potential gap where CSPs in areas with metered interval data may face a barrier to participation in the PJM market. This restriction in demand-side resources’ access to the market would reduce competition that otherwise could bring value to customers.”

In R Street’s “State-by-State Scorecard on Electricity Competition,” the existence of AMI and the accessibility of customer energy-usage data was one of the factors in determining a state’s grade. The report noted that access to AMI data empowers customers and is vital to the development of new markets. Yet in state after state, the lack of data access rules or policies proved a key impediment to meaningful customer choice and, as a result, states getting a better grade.

Both of these FERC complaints lay bare the failure of data access policies. The failure to enact meaningful data access policies within states means two things: 1) the ability of DR and DER more broadly will needlessly be limited and 2) AMI continues to be woefully underutilized. In both cases, customers are the ones most directly harmed since they are unable to sign up for products that could help them save money. In addition, those products can help lower wholesale market prices (and lower customer bills) by avoiding higher cost resources. Finally, by allowing a third party to access customer usage data, the customer can see a real return on their investment in AMI.

While data access issues are not limited to the PJM region, these two complaints evidence the broad failure of many states to craft meaningful data access policies and to ensure the investments in AMI benefit customers. For FERC’s goals on DER participation in wholesale markets to be successful, states must do more to enable third-party access to customer energy-usage data. FERC’s role in these disputes is to consider a technical solution—statistical sampling—to a policy failure. Because customers are paying for these meters, not allowing them to access their own data or to share it with a third party means they cannot realize any value for the entirety of their investments.