Allan Morales
Research Mentor: Justin Schott
Mentor Department: Energy Equity Project – SEAS, SNRE
Author(s): Allan Morales, Yusen Bai, Rahul Bejarano
Session: Session 4 (1:00 PM – 1:50 PM)
Presentation Type: Poster 12
Abstract
The intended goal for this project is to analyze a certain handful of states based on their Public Utility Commission (PUC)/Public Service Commission (PSC) reports on disconnections, reliability indices, and affordability plan enrollments. The project team achieved this by analyzing states on their accessibility, how often they reported (temporal), the location scope of what they reported (spatial), and the formatting of the information. At the state level, Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs) are the privately owned regulated monopolies and are in charge of the actual infrastructure of the gas and electricity facilities. While the PUCs are the regulatory agencies that regulate the IOUs to ensure they are doing their job without an overreach of their power. IOU rates are approved through rate cases run by PUCs/PSCs. Utilities request rate increases to cover planned investments, and advocates for residents and businesses can participate in the decision-making process. Therefore, the social issue addressed in this project is that there is limited public access to utility and commission data, which can make it difficult for people to understand or challenge decisions that affect their bills, especially low-income households. The target audience for this project is both the public, to have free access; other research teams that want to investigate PUC reporting on a deeper level or with a different approach; and residential customer advocates and intervenors in rate cases to have proper data to defend their arguments and proposals. With this greater accessibility to data, it not only makes it more transparent and makes all regulated utilities more accountable, but it also removes the barrier for future research in this field and reduces years of significant work. The current goal is to evaluate current reporting practices and offer recommendations for improvements. However, the ultimate goal is to get to an automated pipeline, but only once better reporting standards are in place.
