Ratepayer Fairness Act 2017-03-13 Introduced in Senate Ratepayer Fairness Act

This bill amends the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 to require a state regulatory authority and a nonregulated electric utility, to the extent that they allow electric utility rates to include charges that subsidize customer-side technology, to consider whether that subsidy would:

  • result in benefits predominately enjoyed by only the users of the customer-side technology;
  • shift costs of a customer-side technology to electricity consumers who do not use it, particularly in cases in which disparate economic or resource conditions exist among the electricity consumers cross-subsidizing the customer-side technology;
  • negatively affect resource utilization, fuel diversity, grid reliability, or grid security;
  • give any unfair competitive advantage to market the customer-side technology, including an analysis of whether a state regulatory authority has uncovered fraudulent customer-side technology marketing practices; and
  • be necessary to fulfill an obligation to serve electric consumers.

The bill sets deadlines within which the regulatory authority or electric utility must set a hearing date to consider and subsequently determine the subsidization of customer-side technology.

]]> text/xml EN Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, this file is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain. Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress This file contains bill summaries for federal legislation. A bill summary describes the most significant provisions of a piece of legislation and details the effects the legislative text may have on current law and federal programs. Bill summaries are authored by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress. As stated in Public Law 91-510 (2 USC 166 (d)(6)), one of the duties of CRS is "to prepare summaries and digests of bills and resolutions of a public general nature introduced in the Senate or House of Representatives". For more information, refer to the User Guide that accompanies this file.