It is the policy of this state to do the following throughout this state:

(A) Ensure the availability to consumers of adequate, reliable, safe, efficient, nondiscriminatory, and reasonably priced retail electric service;

(B) Ensure the availability of unbundled and comparable retail electric service that provides consumers with the supplier, price, terms, conditions, and quality options they elect to meet their respective needs;

(C) Ensure diversity of electricity supplies and suppliers, by giving consumers effective choices over the selection of those supplies and suppliers and by encouraging the development of distributed and small generation facilities;

(D) Encourage innovation and market access for cost-effective supply-and demand-side retail electric service including, but not limited to, demand-side management, time-differentiated pricing, waste energy recovery systems, smart grid programs, and implementation of advanced metering infrastructure;

(E) Encourage cost-effective and efficient access to information regarding the operation of the transmission and distribution systems of electric utilities in order to promote both effective customer choice of retail electric service and the development of performance standards and targets for service quality for all consumers, including annual achievement reports written in plain language;

(F) Ensure that an electric utility's transmission and distribution systems are available to a customer-generator or owner of distributed generation, so that the customer-generator or owner can market and deliver the electricity it produces;

(G) Recognize the continuing emergence of competitive electricity markets through the development and implementation of flexible regulatory treatment;

(H) Ensure effective competition in the provision of retail electric service by avoiding anticompetitive subsidies flowing from a noncompetitive retail electric service to a competitive retail electric service or to a product or service other than retail electric service, and vice versa, including by prohibiting the recovery of any generation-related costs through distribution or transmission rates;

(I) Ensure retail electric service consumers protection against unreasonable sales practices, market deficiencies, and market power;

(J) Provide coherent, transparent means of giving appropriate incentives to technologies that can adapt successfully to potential environmental mandates;

(K) Encourage implementation of distributed generation across customer classes through regular review and updating of administrative rules governing critical issues such as, but not limited to, interconnection standards, standby charges, and net metering;

(L) Protect at-risk populations, including, but not limited to, when considering the implementation of any new advanced energy or renewable energy resource;

(M) Encourage the education of small business owners in this state regarding the use of, and encourage the use of, energy efficiency programs and alternative energy resources in their businesses;

(N) Facilitate the state's effectiveness in the global economy.

(O) Encourage cost-effective, timely, and efficient access to and sharing of customer usage data with customers and competitive suppliers to promote customer choice and grid modernization.

(P) Ensure that a customer's data is provided in a standard format and provided to third parties in as close to real time as is economically justifiable in order to spur economic investment and improve the energy options of individual customers.

In carrying out this policy, the commission shall consider rules as they apply to the costs of electric distribution infrastructure, including, but not limited to, line extensions, for the purpose of development in this state.

Amended by 133rd General Assembly File No. TBD, HB 166, §101.01, eff. 10/17/2019.

Amended by 129th General AssemblyFile No.125, SB 315, §101.01, eff. 9/10/2012.

Effective Date: 10-05-1999; 2008 SB221 07-31-2008