1. The restructuring goals of the Commission should be advanced by establishing :
a. An option to choose daily self-balancing in lieu of PG&E's bundled balancing.
b. A system for electronic trading of actual gas imbalances, and for the trading of imbalance rights.
c. Unbundled rates for increments of core storage allocations, allowing core transport agents to obtain different resources to ensure reliable service to their core customers.
d. An electronic trading system for secondary market pipeline capacity.
e. The level of interest in new ways for customers or their agents to receive additional real-time usage information.
f. A pilot program for customer ownership of meters for new noncore installations, and customer ownership of meter add-on devices.
g. Billing credits for CTAs that perform consolidated gas billing and thus enable PG&E to avoid costs associated with preparing and sending gas bills.
2. The issues listed in Finding of Fact 5 should be addressed within six months as appropriate to each issue and as more specifically set forth in the order.
3. No evidentiary hearing is necessary to change the provisions of the Gas Accord affected by this settlement agreement, or to alter D.97-08-055.
4. The proposed settlement is consistent with the law.
5. The proposed settlement is reasonable in light of the whole record.
6. The proposed settlement is in the public interest.
7. This settlement agreement should not be construed as substantially changing the existing core aggregation program so as to disallow billing by core transport agents in lieu of PG&E.
8. This order should be effective today, so that the settlement may be implemented expeditiously.
SECOND INTERIM ORDER
IT IS ORDERED that:
1. The Joint Motion of Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E); Aglet Consumer Alliance; Association of Bay Area Governments Publicly Owned Energy Resources; California Cogeneration Council; California Industrial Group and California Manufacturers Association; California Utility Buyers JPA, a California joint powers authority; Calpine Corporation; Cellnet Data Systems, Inc.; City of Palo Alto; Coalition of California Utility Employees; Dynegy, Inc.; Enron North America and Enron Energy Services, Inc.; GreenMountain.com Company; Interstate Gas Services, Inc.; Northern California Generation Coalition; Northern California Power Agency; Office of Ratepayer Advocates; PanCanadian Energy Services Inc.; School Project for Utility Rate Reduction, a California joint powers authority; Southern Energy California, L.L.C.; Suncor, Inc.; The Utility Reform Network; United Energy Management, Inc.; TXU Energy Services; Western Hub Properties, LLC; and Wild Goose Storage, Inc. For Approval of Comprehensive PG&E Settlement Agreement, filed on January 28, 2000, and set forth as Attachment A, is granted.
2. The settlement shall not be construed as substantially changing the existing core aggregation program so as to exclude core aggregators from providing billing to their customers.
3. PG&E shall file a compliance advice letter to implement the adopted revisions to its currently effective gas tariffs no later than 60 days after the effective date of this decision, as specified in Section 1.7 of the Settlement Agreement. The detailed methods for dealing with oversubscription for the self-balancing option and for determining monthly usage of Core Procurement Groups as a baseline for measuring accumulated daily imbalances shall be set forth in this compliance filing. The compliance filing shall specify compliance monitoring, cost responsibility, and enforcement measures. The advice letter shall be effective upon appropriate review by Commission staff.
4. PG&E shall address the issue of storage capacity allocated to balancing service by filing an application with the Commission no later than March 1, 2001.
5. PG&E shall file an application seeking to expand or terminate the pilot program on customer-owned meters and add-on devices no later than July 1, 2002 and no sooner than June 1, 2002.
6. PG&E shall report to the Energy Division on the interest in real-time access methodology and/or file an application regarding this methodology within six months from the effective date of this decision.
7. PG&E shall file an advice letter revising its Core Procurement Incentive Mechanism winter storage target within 60 days after the end of an election
period during which a Core Transport Agent elected to increase or decrease its allocation of storage.
This order is effective today.
Dated May 18, 2000, at San Francisco, California.
LORETTA M. LYNCH
President
HENRY M. DUQUE
JOSIAH L. NEEPER
RICHARD A. BILAS
CARL W. WOOD
Commissioners
NOTE: See Formal Files for Attachments A, B, C.