Wondering What Industry Leaders Are Thinking About Data Access? We Asked Them.

The first NARUC conference I attended was in February 2016. I found it overwhelming but also a fascinating mix of industry news, case studies, and gossip (always gossip!). When I was on Commission staff, NARUC provided a valuable opportunity to meet with peers who were tackling some of the toughest energy policy challenges in the nation, from gas distribution planning to increasing public participation. While the ways customers share their utility data with third parties would come up in panel discussions, it usually wasn’t headlining general sessions or being talked about at a depth equal to its technical complexity.

In April, I joined UtilityAPI, and since then, I’ve been immersed in how software and technology advances are unlocking new uses for energy data. One of my goals at this year’s NARUC Annual Meeting was to find out what regulators, utilities, and other industry stakeholders think about the topic now. How important is data access to our energy future? What misconceptions do people have about it? Are the remaining barriers to data-sharing grounded in problems with technology, policy, or incentives? Here are my five biggest takeaways on data access from Seattle.

Regulators remain bullish about load flexibility and they know that it requires data-sharing.

While NARUC has bent more toward fossil fuels than is practical or economic in recent years, many state regulators still see load flexibility through virtual power plants (VPPs) as the biggest short-term opportunity to manage surging load growth. States are struggling with resource adequacy, and legislative requirements for VPP pilots and programs have been adopted in Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, and Virginia, among others – the NC Clean Energy Technology Center and SEPA tracked activities in 37 states and D.C. in 2024. Panels and lunches raised VPPs as a way to help navigate large load additions, including whether data center customers should be required to fund load flexibility by smaller customers or engage in it themselves.

With VPPs, it’s no longer a question of whether to invest in them but how quickly we can make them scale to counter costly investments in new power supply and infrastructure. Access to interval data for customer enrollment and accurate settlement regarding performance will be critical to ensure VPPs can meet the challenge.

The dream of one-click data access is alive.

More than one regulator expressed to me that they envision a future where sharing your energy data with your preferred vendor is a button click away. They see the connections between energy data and other industries: if I can easily share my bank information with a budgeting app to help me save money, why can’t I easily share my energy data with Google Home for the same reason?

While the vision is there, what to look for isn’t always clear. Not everyone has gotten a bid for a heat pump or a battery system, so not everyone has gone through the process of trying to get their energy data from utility A to vendor B. One way companies like UtilityAPI can bridge this gap is to provide demonstration opportunities for regulators, utilities, and consumer advocates to experience the friction that customers and distributed energy resource (DER) providers face–and then contrast it with well-designed alternatives.

The examples that data access and DER provider companies look to just aren’t well-known by regulators or utilities.

Multi-utility data platforms like SmartMeterTexas and the California utilities’ Share My Data tools are industry leaders in allowing utility customers to share their data with third parties, from retail suppliers to battery storage vendors. Yet very few people know much if anything about them. To be fair, if you live in Massachusetts, you probably aren’t trying to figure out how to share your meter data in Texas. There’s a lot more that those of us who work in this field can do to highlight where these platforms excel and explain what’s not working as well and why.

The reality is that there is no single, perfect example of a data platform just yet. This is why we’re excited by recent work underway at ComEd and by utilities in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. They are building on the lessons of these foundational deployments to develop the next generation of multi-use, multi-utility, market-enabling data platforms–much like how advanced metering technology has been evolving from “version 1.0” to distributed intelligence. With these projects, we are converging on a standard vision for data infrastructure where it is possible to implement off-the-shelf tools and principles for the highest-volume data-sharing needs. Instead of reinventing the wheel when data-sharing comes up, regulators can adopt tested practices.

Misconceptions abound about Green Button Connect.

When I tell people we reduce friction for customers so they can share the information they need to enroll in their preferred energy programs, utility staff I spoke with were enthusiastic. We all recognize that part of an all-of-the-above energy strategy means bringing customers into load flexibility. But when I started the conversation by talking about Green Button Connect (GBC), it was a show-stopper. Utilities associate it with early implementations that led to low customer and third-party usage.

This is unfortunate because a modern, certified GBC implementation is a foundational technology for a flexible load future. GBC is part of the suite of functionalities that create an effective data exchange platform: a platform that incorporates secure customer authentication and authorization, and includes a streamlined third-party registration process. When these features work smoothly, you convert your data exchange from a compliance check-box to an engine for customers to choose how they want to participate in the energy transition. We encourage utilities and regulators who want to scale load flexibility to engage with the Green Button Alliance to better understand the full range of opportunities that GBC enables.

Better access to data was on everyone’s list of needs, even if they weren’t shouting from the rooftops.

Being effective at regulatory work means making hard choices about priorities. UtilityAPI is unique in that we’re one of a few cleantech entities whose regulatory presence is almost entirely focused on how to make data access and sharing secure, seamless, and speedy for everyone involved.

Sometimes when regulators don’t hear directly from energy data users, it’s because those users have found temporary work-arounds–like screen scraping. This doesn’t mean that data isn’t important to them. It means they’ve found a fix so they can focus limited regulatory resources on their biggest issues: like cost allocation or consumer protection.

At NARUC, I met large retailers who want to organize information about thousands of facilities to forecast energy budgets. Commercial property managers who need utility data for energy management. Consumer advocates who want community navigators to have energy data to help low-income customers find every opportunity to get out of cycles of debt and disconnection. DER providers who need interval data to provide accurate estimates of bill savings to meet fair advertising laws. While we don’t represent these third-party users, we have to continue to speak to their interests and priorities because meeting their needs helps meet the needs of the utility customers who hire them.

These insights will inform where we focus our efforts in the coming months, as we help stakeholders in regulatory processes understand where data access fits in and what opportunities it creates. Thank you to everyone who spoke with me about an incredibly niche, nerdy issue within an already niche, nerdy industry. Looking forward to seeing you at the next NARUC conference!