Edison Sues CEC over Secrecy

Southern California Edison filed a lawsuit to require the California Energy Commission to keep secret utility data on electricity demand, claiming that data disclosure would drive up energy prices. ?A football team would be severely damaged if its playbook were disclosed to its opponent,? wrote Edison consultant Charles Plott. The case, filed against the commission in Sacramento Superior Court June 10, specifically seeks to keep utility data on total system peak and direct-access peak consumption confidential. Those data are submitted to the commission to help it develop a forecast for the state?s future energy needs. The CEC in March agreed to keep secret the utility?s temperature scenarios and hourly load forecasts. However,the commission believes that transparency is necessary when it comes to peak-demand data that are critical to the reliability of the state?s grid. ?The peak demand data the CEC proposes making public [are] highly sensitive information that could be used by power generators, energy traders, and other market participants to manipulate wholesale prices, especially during the summer period when supplies are tighter than at other times. We are seeking the court?s intervention in an effort to protect our customers,? Edison added in a statement this week. ?The CPUC treats such information as confidential. We believe the CEC can best serve California consumers by adopting the same policy.? In addition to requesting that the court bar the CEC from making the information public, Edison seeks damages if the information is revealed. It also is asking that the state pay the cost of litigation arising from any release of information. Assessing damages could lead to drawn-out litigation and forensic analysis of the hybrid market?s behavior. ?We?ll win,? said Gary Schoonyan, Edison director of regulatory affairs. The state?s two other investor-owned utilities are not joining the suit. While Pacific Gas & Electric agrees with Edison that peak-demand data ideally should remain confidential, it trusts the CEC to maintain the confidentiality of much of the information it submitted for the report, said Jon Tremayne, company spokesperson. Sempra Energy utilities agree. ?The sensitivity of the information has already been discussed by the CEC at a hearing,? said Denise King, spokesperson for Sempra. The company already has provided the requested information and is ?going to abide by? the commission?s decision to publish the peak-demand data, she said. The lawsuit highlights the commission?s predicament in adjusting to a hybrid market?part regulated, part free market. Prior to deregulation, it produced integrated energy policy reports for needs assessments. In turn, the California Public Utilities Commission would contour utilities? supply investments in accordance with the state?s expected need. During deregulation, the needs analysis was suspended in favor of letting the market determine demand. Now the CEC is back in the needs-assessment business. However, it?s in an environment where both utilities and third-party power producers vie for the opportunity to build new power plants. In the hybrid market, said Scott Matthews, CEC acting director, the commission?s data role has become more involved. Under the regulated market, he said, the commission used to collect supply-and-demand forecasts from utilities, and that was in an aggregate form. ?There were no trade secrets because there was no trade,? he said. Now the commission collects more specific data?not only for its own analysis but for the California Public Utilities Commission. The Energy Commission is bound by confidentiality agreements with utilities, but it also has to try for transparency as spelled out in the Energy Action Plan. The plan puts a priority on transparency, said commissioner John Geesman. The CEC?s integrated energy report committee will make decisions only on the basis of public information. The commission recently called the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power on the carpet for nondisclosure ( Circuit , April 29, 2005). That dispute was resolved, according to Matthews, largely through repairing a lag in timing between the commission?s request and the information?s availability. Elizabeth McCarthy also contributed to this report

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Edison Sues CEC over Secrecy

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