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Massachusetts Senate Approves Conference Report Which Retains Individual Residential Electric Choice, Adopts House's Retail Market Enhancements
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The Massachusetts Senate has adopted a conference committee report to reconcile differences in a wide-ranging energy bill, with the conference committee report striking from the comprehensive bill the Senate's originally passed prohibition on individual residential electric choice, with the conference committee report favoring the House's stance on the issue
The bill, now numbered S.2967, also includes certain retail market enhancements passed by the House, as discussed below. The conference committee version of the bill still must pass the House
Earlier, the Senate-passed version of the bill (then S.2838) had included language providing that, "On or after January 1, 2026, no supplier, energy marketer or energy broker shall execute a new contract or renew an existing contract for generation services with any individual residential retail customer". This provision did not apply to municipal aggregation
The House struck this provision in passing S.2838
The conference committee report adopts the House's treatment of this matter, and the conference committee report does not prohibit individual residential electric choice
The conference committee report reflected in S.2967, adopted by the Senate, also requires the implementation of the following retail market enhancements (which were already agreed to by the House in the House's version of S.2838):
• Accelerated switching (3 business days) for residential or small commercial customers, upon full AMI deployment
• Contract portability for a customer moving within an EDC service area, allowing the customer to be served by their existing retail supplier at the new location, with no interim period on default service
• Day 1 switching, allowing customers to take retail supplier service immediately upon service initiation, without being placed on default service for an interim period
S.2967 also requires the development of a portal for customer AMI data, and retail supplier access to such, "subject to appropriate customer
approval and protections".
S.2967 also does not include the removal of the current statutory provision which limits the term length of basic service wholesale supply contracts to 6 months, as the earlier Senate bill had done
Note that the Senate's provision banning individual residential electric choice was also separately passed by the Senate on a stand-alone basis under S.2738 (though it would be effective for 2025 rather than 2026). The stand-alone S.2738 remains sitting in a House committee
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October 28, 2024
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Copyright 2024 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com
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