IV. Comments on Draft Decision and Alternate

The Draft Decision (DD) of ALJ Barnett was mailed on January 25, 2002. The Alternate Draft Decision (ADD) of Commissioner Geoffrey Brown was mailed on February 7, 2002. Comments on both the DD and ADD were received on February 14, 2002. Comments were filed by Laguna Irrigation District, Powersource Corporation, Association of California Water Agencies, Cargill, Incorporated, Jack-In-The-Box, UC/CSU, The Community College League of California, The Building Owners and Managers Association, Irvine Company, California Industrial Users, Leprino Foods Company, Callaway Golf company, Kroger Company, City of Cerritos, California Manufacturers & Technology Association, Agricultural Energy Consumers Association, Newark Group, Inc., AES New Energy, Inc., AReM and Western Power Trading Forum, California Independent Petroleum Association, Commonwealth Energy Corporation, ORA, City of San Marcos, California Retailers Association, Energy Producers and Users Coalition, SBC Services, Inc, County Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, Sempra Energy Solutions, PG&E, California Energy Commission, DWR, SDG&E, Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse, City of Corona, Simpson Timber Company, Los Angeles Unified School District, 7-Eleven and Wal-Mart, SCE, Strategic Energy, L.L.C., TURN, Sutter Health, California Large Energy Consumers, Department of Navy, Enron Energy Service, Inc. & Enron Energy Markets Corp., American Yeast Corporation, California Small Business Roundtable and California Small Business Association, and Applied Materials.¹¹

  In issuing today's decision, we make certain changes in response to the comments. As ORA, PG&E and TURN point out, the ADD must explicitly determine that a direct access surcharge or exit fee will be adopted and levied on direct access customers in order to ensure an equitable outcome for all customers. We agree and will modify accordingly. We have also added clarifying language concerning backbilling as suggested by PG&E. In response to CMTA's comments, we have added language in the conclusions of law concerning assignment and renewals. We agree with Strategic Energy that some very limited exceptions to the October 5, 2001 ESP customer list should be allowed, if errors occurred.

SCE states in its comments that "SCE interprets the [alternate's] directive that direct access load as of September 20, 2001, not increase to mean that only direct access customers receiving power from their ESP as of September 20, 2001, shall be allowed to remain on direct access service and that all direct access switches after September 20, 2001 - which would necessarily increase direct access load - are prohibited." (SCE's Comments, dated February 14, 2002, p. 8, emphasis in the original.) SCE continues: "Therefore if the [alternate] is adopted, SCE will revert all direct access customer service accounts which were not receiving power from their ESPs as of September 20, 2001 back to bundled service." (SCE's Comments, dated February 14, 2002, p. 8, emphasis in the original.) In response to this comment, we note that it was not our intent to cause such a result. Thus, we make it clear in today's decision that the utilities shall not return direct access customers to bundled service based upon when power flowed from an ESP to a customer, nor upon whether the utility processed a DASR by any particular date. As discussed herein, utilities must accept for direct access service and various service changes discussed herein any DASR based upon the ESPs' October 5, 2001 customer list, and honor the exception process as discussed. We accept SCE's suggestions regarding certain clarifications to the ordering paragraphs.

To ensure clarity, we will emphasize here that all direct access customers with valid contracts signed on or before September 20, 2001 may remain direct access customers, regardless of whether they were receiving power from their ESP as of September 20, 2001 (subject to the other restrictions in this decision). Our intentions in ensuring that the level of direct access load not increase are based upon the level of load under contract as of September 20, 2001.

Other clarifications and deletions are made for consistency purposes.