BILL ANALYSIS
SB 1476
Page 1
Date of Hearing: August 4, 2010
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Felipe Fuentes, Chair
SB 1476 (Padilla) - As Amended: August 2, 2010
Policy Committee: Utilities and
Commerce Vote: 13-0
Judiciary 10-0
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
No Reimbursable:
SUMMARY
This bill requires an electrical or gas investor-owned utility
(IOU) or a publicly owned electrical utility (POU) using
advanced metering ("smart meters") to protect customers' energy
usage data from unauthorized access or disclosure, and prohibits
IOUs and POUs from the following activities:
1)Sharing, disclosing, or selling to any third party data about
a customer's energy usage or any other personally identifiable
information.
2)Conditioning a customer's access to their energy usage data on
the payment of an incentive or discount. If the utility
contracts with a third party for a service allowing a customer
to track their energy usage, and the third party used the data
for secondary commercial purposes, the utility must (a) ensure
that the third party discloses the secondary use to the
customer and (b) provide the customer with an option to
monitor their energy use that is not conditioned on third
party use for a secondary commercial purpose.
The bill stipulates that the above does not prohibit an IOU or
POU from using aggregate energy usage data for analysis,
reporting, or program management, or from disclosing such data
to a third party system, grid, operational needs, or
implementing demand response, energy management, or energy
efficiency programs.
FISCAL EFFECT
SB 1476
Page 2
Ongoing special fund costs of about $100,000 to the Public
Utilities Commission for one position to monitor IOU compliance
with the bill's requirements. [Public Utilities Reimbursement
Account.]
COMMENT
Purpose . "Smart meters" allow data to be sent via Internet
directly to the utility (thus avoiding the need for individual
collection at each meter), and permit utility customers to
monitor their consumption data, ideally to adjust their behavior
and use energy more efficiently. Customers generally access this
data through third parties, such as Google Power Meter, which
provide tools for analyzing the data and informing the customer
how they might change their consumption patterns. Third party
providers often require the consumer to permit the provider to
share the consumption data for commercial use. This bill
requires utilities to offer the consumer an option to access
data without the condition of sharing consumption data,
prohibits utilities from sharing, disclosing, or selling
consumption data or personal information (subject to certain
exceptions), and requires both the public utilities and third
party contractors to adopt reasonable security measures.
Analysis Prepared by : Chuck Nicol / APPR. / (916) 319-2081