BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    �



                                                                  SB 674
                                                                  Page  1

          Date of Hearing:   July 13, 2011

                        ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
                                Felipe Fuentes, Chair

                    SB 674 (Padilla) - As Amended:  July 6, 2011 

          Policy Committee:                              
          UtilitiesVote:12-0 (Consent)
                        Judiciary                               9-0 
          (Consent)

          Urgency:     No                   State Mandated Local Program: 
          No     Reimbursable:               

           SUMMARY  

          This bill extends certain privacy provisions for utility 
          customers to include third party contractors, clarifies 
          treatment of photovoltaic rebates when projects are installed in 
          mobilehome parks, and deletes an obsolete provision in law.  
          Specifically, this bill:  

          1)Clarifies that a contract between a public utility and a third 
            party allowing customers to use advanced metering technology 
            (smart meters) to monitor their energy consumption patterns 
            must specify that the third party cannot disclose energy 
            consumption data for a secondary commercial purpose without a 
            customer's prior consent.

          2)Excludes California Solar Initiative incentive payments for 
            solar energy systems serving a mobilehome park from the 
            definition of rebates as provided to master-metered customers 
            of that park.

          3)Repeals the California High Speed Internet Access Act of 1999, 
            which required the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to 
            monitor and participate in a now-completed proceeding of the 
            Federal Communications Commission.

           FISCAL EFFECT  

          Negligible fiscal impact.

           COMMENTS  








                                                                  SB 674
                                                                  Page  2


           Purpose  . According to the author, this is effectively a code 
          maintenance bill.  Most notably, it contains clarifying 
          amendments to SB 1476 (Padilla)/Chapter 497 of 2010, which 
          permitted an investor-owned utility and a publicly-owned utility 
          to contract with a third party to provide its customers with 
          smart meters, as long as both the utility and the third party 
          took certain steps to protect a customer's consumption data from 
          an unauthorized access or disclosure. (Smart meters transmit 
          energy consumption data directly to the utility company over the 
          Internet, which eliminates the cost of on-site reading and 
          allows customers to monitor their consumption patterns and adopt 
          more efficient consumption behaviors.)  

          While permitting more intelligent and efficient energy usage, 
          this technology also raises the potential that a person's 
          private consumption habits could be accessed for no legitimate 
          business purpose or sold for commercial purposes.  SB 1476 
          therefore included a number of security requirements intended to 
          protect a customer's consumption data and personal information 
          from unauthorized access, and to ensure that third party 
          contractors did not use the information for commercial purposes 
          without the customer's consent.

          SB 674 clarifies that contracts between utilities and third 
          parties to provide advanced metering programs must specify that 
          the third party cannot disclose data for a secondary commercial 
          purpose without the customer's prior consent.

           Analysis Prepared by  :    Chuck Nicol / APPR. / (916) 319-2081