Each month, Connecticut Light & Power and United Illuminating are required to submit to the Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC), their latest statistics on competitive supplier load and customer switching trends.
In Connecticut’s competitive energy market, these reports show us key statistics on how many residential, commercial, and industrial customers have switched from their host utility (UI or CL&P depending on where you live) to a competitive retail energy supplier, and which suppliers they’re switching to.
The Connecticut DPUC tracks the status of electric choice and customer switching for a couple of pretty interesting reasons:
1.) How “Competitive” is the Market Functioning?
The CT DPUC needs to be able to monitor the overall “health” of the competitive energy market in Connecticut. They must ensure that the market rules and regulations that they are responsible for overseeing, are working in a way that benefits Connecticut energy consumers.
These monthly switching (or migration) reports allow the DPUC to see into how much (or how little) energy consumers are switching to alternative energy providers. Likewise, these reports also tell us how much better (or worse) competitive energy providers’ offers are, compared to the UI and CL&P standard offer price per kWh.
If these migration numbers rise month over month, that typically means that alternative energy suppliers are offering competitive energy rates that beat your host utilities’ current rates.
If these numbers fall or stay flat from month to month, that gives us a good indication that alternative energy suppliers cannot offer an incentive for customers to switch. Or, perhaps the market rules and regulations have not yet been developed in a way that would optimize a more robust pattern of switching behavior.
2.) Market Power and Competitive Oversight
The DPUC also needs to ensure proper oversight of the overall behavior of alternative energy suppliers with respect to their competitive marketing and sales practices, and overall compliance with the rules and regulations of the market.
As numbers of customer counts are reported from month to month, for example, sharp spikes or drops in customer enrollments might indicate something “sneaky” might be happening, which would tip the state’s regulators to perhaps keep a closer watch on those particular suppliers in the future.
Alternative energy suppliers must adhere to a strict set of fair marketing practices and procedures, and the DPUC has been very adamant in the past about issuing hefty fines, penalties, and even stripping suppliers of their licenses if necessary, in order to combat against unfair, deceptive, and/or devious sales and marketing practices (such as stealing or “slamming” customers away from competitors, or “cramming” customers with deceptive sales pitches or false contract claims).
These monthly statistics can provide hints or clues into those kinds of potential situations.
3.) Competitive Market Intelligence
These monthly migration reports are also invaluable resources for competitive energy suppliers and other market participants.
Each month, in each utility service territory, we can see how energy suppliers are performing in the marketplace, with respect to number of customers currently being served, and the number of MWh currently under contract.
The reports serve as a competitive “scorecard” of sorts, as suppliers can easily see how well (or how not so well) they’re competing against other suppliers.
If you stack these monthly reports next to each other over time, we can begin to see a trend in terms of which suppliers may be losing customers, and conversely, which suppliers may be gaining new customers.
These reports serve as a great piece of competitive market intelligence for market players to “keep tabs” on each other as well.
How to Find These Key Migration Reports
As you might imagine, it’s probably no surprise that these kinds of competitive market reports are buried somewhere deep inside the DPUC’s vaults. The cool thing is that, by law, this information must live in the public domain. So, the trick is often in simply knowing where to go to find it (as they often say – usually the devil is in the details). 
Well…you’ve come to the right place…because we’re totally going to tell you exactly how to find this valuable information.…
The Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC) keeps track of these key market reports in Docket No. 06-10-22 – DPUC Monitoring the State of Competition in the Electric Industry.
Finding these reports is actually pretty easy, once you know where to look for them.
Here’s all you have to do…
1.) Simply navigate to the DPUC website → HERE.
2.) Then navigate to the “DPUC Dockets” tab along the top menu bar.
3.) From the “DPUC Dockets” tab, you’ll want to scroll down to the first “Search for a Docket by Number” menu option:
4.) After you click on “Search for a Docket by Number,” you will come to a screen that looks like this:
5.) Then, since we’ve already given you the Docket Number above (06-10-22), simply key “06-10-22″ into the text box and then click on “Click here after entering the Docket” at the bottom.
6.) And that’s it – you’re in!
Now, once you get into the actual Docket site pages, you may want to spend some time scrolling through as the reports have been archived there all the way back a few years (there a few screens worth of reports to catalog through).
Make sure you pay close notice to the file names provided in the links and then scroll to the month(s) and utilities you wish to locate.
And that’s pretty much it! From there, you can download the individual monthly reports for further use.
Here’s another quick tip…
UI typically files its report at the beginning of the month (usually somewhere between the 5th and the 10th). CL&P usually files its report later in the month (usually somewhere in the 3rd week). Sometimes, holidays or other processing delays can cause shifts in the actual posting dates, but usually, this is when you can expect to see the reports published.
- Here is a sample of one of UI’s monthly reports, and
- Here is a sample of one of CL&P’s monthly reports
As you’ll quickly see, these reports are quite valuable to competitive energy providers, as well as state regulators, legislators, and utilities. They provide a great deal of competitive market intelligence, and also provide keen insight, on a monthly basis, as to how well the competitive market is performing.
And that’s about all there is to it, folks! We hope you found this post useful (bookmark if you’d like!), and if so, please share it with your friends, families, and colleagues. (HINT: That “Retweet This!” button down there on the bottom right is the easiest way!)
Many cheers,
- The CT ENB
Related Posts:
- Connecticut Electric LRS Rates Changing July 1
- Competitive Supplier 2010 Year-End Review: Connecticut Light & Power
- Power Shopping in CL&P Territory Ends Strong in 2010
- Competitive Supplier 2010 Year-End Review: United Illuminating
- Power Shopping in United Illuminating Territory Still Climbing at Year-End 2010
