ABACCUS Residential Rankings Shift As Load Size Added to Criteria

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December 6, 2010

Texas retained its top spot in the Annual Baseline Assessment of Choice in Canada and the United States (ABACCUS) for residential markets reported by Distributed Energy Financial Group, but the addition of several new criteria jumbled the rankings after the top three.

Most notably, Connecticut, which has a higher statewide percentage of migrated residential customers than any other North American market except for Texas, fell five spots in the latest residential rankings.  Connecticut placed 12th, falling from 7th a year ago, though its numeric score was relatively constant (45 in 2010 versus 47 in 2009).

However, several jurisdictions jumped ahead of Connecticut in the rankings with higher scores, notably Ohio (with no residential offers in several service areas), Illinois (with a single publicized residential offer), New Jersey, and Ontario.  Aside from lacking the significant residential migration present in Connecticut, those markets also lack state-wide Purchase of Receivables, a customer referral program, and generally do not have a significantly more market-based default service procurement process than Connecticut.

The primary reason for the changes in rankings was several additional criteria added in the ABACCUS methodology for 2010.  Most prominently, market size was added for the first time as a measure of market attractiveness.  This new market size metric is largely responsible for large states with less attractive retail market designs (Illinois, Ohio) jumping ahead of Connecticut, which has done everything asked of it by retail suppliers except move to quarterly priced default service.

2010 ABACCUS Residential Rankings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABACCUS noted that Connecticut is significantly ahead of nearly all markets in terms of statewide residential migration, with Connecticut leading the U.S. among states with a traditional default service provider (totals include municipal aggregation):

Texas                        87.1%
Connecticut               32.1%
Alberta                      27.2%
Ohio                         24.4%
New York                  17.9%
Massachusetts          12.2%
Pennsylvania             10.0%
Maryland                    9.6%

ABACCUS also released rankings of commercial and industrial markets, with Texas leading, followed by New York and Illinois.  Complete commercial and industrial rankings can be found on DEFG's website in the ABACCUS report (p. 14).

The ABACCUS rankings are based on a formula of several metrics covering: 1) retail market status, 2) wholesale market competition, 3) default or standard service design, and 4) facilitation of the choice of retailer.

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