Commonwealth Edison Co. said it is working with consumer advocate groups to make it easier for customers to obtain their energy data.
“We think every customer should be able to get access to the data associated with their account and to do whatever they please with that data,” Val Jensen, ComEd senior vice president of customer operations, told the Tribune on Thursday.
Among other issues the company needs to work out, he said, were privacy concerns.
The utility executive was responding to a Thursday front-page story that outlined how ComEd customers were having difficulty in obtaining their energy use information. Smart meters, devices that could help people become more energy savvy and efficient, were a selling point when the utility explained why it needed consumers to pay for a $2.6 billion grid modernization effort.
ComEd said such data is available to consumers who want it. Jensen said the data can be downloaded by going to ComEd’s website, logging into your account, clicking “my usage” and then “usage history.” A button on that page allows you to download your usage history in an Excel format.A similar process is available for commercial and industrial customers, ComEd said.
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About 425,000 people in ComEd’s territory already have smart meters but regulators are still hashing out who owns the data the devices transmit and how that data should be released. Ultimately the smart meters will be installed at 4 million locations in ComEd’s service area.
Jensen said the company will not give out energy data to third parties without the permission of customers. Until regulators determine who owns that data – customers or the utility – ComEd is counting on consumers to provide their own downloaded data to third party companies.
So far, ComEd hasn’t gotten many data requests, Jensen said. But utility also is aware “it can’t wait until we have 4 million customers raise their hands.”
In the interim, some third party companies, many of them startups, are largely stalled in their efforts to sell their services to electric customers. They are offering to help customers cut their bills, become more energy efficient, tie in to solar power and even sell excess power back to ComEd.
Some companies wishing to use that data told the Tribune this week that the authorization process is too onerous to gain customers. They say accessing energy data should be as simple as pushing a “yes” or “no” button, in much the same way consumers allow Facebook or Twitter to connect to applications on their smartphones.
Mark Handy, chief executive of Kenjiva Energy Systems in Chicago, said his business model – which would pay customers to power down during congested times on the electric grid – would require thousands of customers sharing data in a relatively short period of time and that the process as it stands now would be too onerous to make his business work.
Consumer data advocates who are pushing for greater access would like to see Illinois improve on a model called “Green Button” that’s being used in California at Pacific Gas and Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric. With a simple login, customers can move data in a standard format, to whomever they like.
Jensen said the company looked at the California utilities as a potential model, but found that creating a back-end platform that can automatically authenticate that a third party is secure and authorized to receive a customer’s data has been “more complicated than we thought it would be when we started.”
Part of the issue is money, Jensen said. There is a cost to set up such a platform and in order to justify such an investment for consumers, ComEd would need clarity from the Illinois Commerce Commission. Specifically, ComEd needs to know where its responsibilities end and a consumer’s begin.
Consumer advocate groups have asked the ICC to lay out a consumer bill of rights by spring.
Thursday’s story told the tale of a building manager who attempted to contract with an outside company to create a “dashboard” for her building’s tenants. The idea was to show tenants their energy consumption in real time to encourage energy efficiency. But she said ComEd couldn’t provide authorization forms because they didn’t exist.
“There is no ‘form’ to do this,” Jensen said Thursday. “This has never really been a process before. So we’re working out through the (Illinois Commerce Commission) what the process is for authorizing third-party access to data.”
Jensen said the kind of situation the building manager outlined is being handled on a case by case basis. The data is accessible, he said. Aggregated data for an entire building, he said, has always been easy to access. But breaking it down to the individual tenant level triggers privacy issues.
“We can’t just hand over customer data,” he said. “They need to be able to authorize us to hand over their data,” Jensen said. “And right now that’s not the simplest process.”