The E-Access Act directs the Secretary of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to create model guidelines for giving electricity and natural gas customers better access to their usage and billing data. The bill defines terms such as retail electric energy information, retail natural gas information, grid edge computer, and Green Button Connect My Data. Within 180 days the Secretary and the Commission must issue guidelines developed with industry, consumer groups, States, and other Federal agencies. The guidelines must say that utilities should provide customers (or customers' authorized third parties) with machine-readable data, at least 24 months of history, and as close to real-time as reasonably practicable. The guidelines also cover data security and privacy (including use of recognized privacy programs), standardized consumer consent, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms for third-party access, Green Button Connect My Data certification, availability targets for data systems, performance reporting, and fair competition rules for electric meter software platforms and apps running at the grid edge.
The bill lets State energy offices ask the Secretary to certify that their state policies meet the Federal guidelines. The Secretary may make funds available to certified States to help implement programs; the bill authorizes $10,000,000 for fiscal year 2026 to carry out that assistance. The Secretary must review and update the guidelines every 3 years. The Secretary and the Commission must also deliver a joint report within 1 year evaluating the costs and benefits of using individual customer meter data to settle wholesale electricity market purchases. That report must include counts of customers with advanced metering, estimates and case studies about access to meter data, and analyses of costs and potential benefits.
No publicly available information.