§ 5-15

(This Section may contain text from a Public Act with a delayed effective date ) Sec. 5-15. Utility data access. (a) Within 90 days after the effective date of this Act, the Commission shall open a proceeding to establish by rule, consistent with the Illinois Administrative Procedure Act and the requirements of subsection (c), procedures to implement the requirements of this Section. The Commission shall consider industry best practices along with Illinois law, rules, and Commission orders in developing the implementing rules. The governing authority of a public utility district, municipally owned utility, or cooperative utility may adopt a rule adopted by the Commission. (b) No later than 2 years after the effective date of this Act, the Commission shall adopt procedures through the rulemaking proceeding identified in subsection (a) whereby: (1) a utility shall retain usage data in the possession of the utility on the effective date of this Act or that is subsequently generated by the utility, for a period 5 years or however long the utility retains usage data in its active billing system, whichever is longer; (2) a utility shall honor an account holder's authorized request to transmit the account holder's covered usage data held by the utility to any entity designated by the account holder; (3) a qualified data recipient with respect to a qualified building or qualified property may request that a utility provide aggregated usage data for the qualified building or qualified property. Aggregated usage data shall include identifiers of all meters associated with the aggregate data and any other information needed for data quality assurance; (4) a utility shall establish a tool or process to enable qualified data recipients to request data under this subsection. The tool or process shall meet specifications established by the Commission; (5) the account holder request process and utility delivery of requested data shall be convenient, secure, and at the Commission's direction requests to the utility may be submitted exclusively through an online portal; and (6) a utility shall provide updates or corrections to any previously provided usage information on the schedule established in paragraph (5) of subsection (d). Data recipients may request and receive timely revisions correcting any previously provided usage information. A utility shall also provide usage information on the schedule established in paragraph (5) of subsection (d). (c) Any covered usage data that a utility provides to a data recipient under this Section must meet the following requirements: (1) The covered usage data must be available to be requested online. A utility's validation of the requester's identity shall be consistent with, and no more onerous than, the utility's then-current practices. (2) The covered usage data must be provided to the data recipient in a timeframe, frequency, and format and be delivered by a method as may be determined by the Commission. (d) Any covered usage data that a utility provides to a data recipient under this Section must: (1) be provided to the data recipient within 30 days after receiving the data recipient's valid request if the request is received after the effective date of the rulemaking identified in subsection (a) of this Section; (2) for any initial upload of data to a data recipient and subject to subsection (j) of this Section, a data recipient must include all the data for the time period required in paragraph (1) of subsection (b), regardless of whether the data recipient had a business relationship with the building or property during that period; (3) include all necessary data and available usage data points for data recipients to comply with reporting requirements to which they are subject, including any such usage data that the utility possesses; (4) be directly uploaded to the benchmarking tool account, or delivered in another format approved by the Commission, depending on utility size under subsection (e); (5) be provided to the data recipient according to a schedule set by the Commission, but no less than monthly; (6) be provided until the data recipient revokes the request for usage data or is no longer a data recipient or is no longer a qualified data recipient with respect to aggregated usage data; (7) be accompanied by a list of all meters associated with the covered usage data, including, but not limited to, aggregated usage data, and shall be accompanied by any other information the Commission deems necessary including for data quality assurance; and (8) be provided at no cost to the data recipient. (e) The Commission shall direct that covered usage data shall be delivered to the data recipient in a standard format consistent with the benchmarking tool at the data recipient's request. The Commission shall direct electric utilities that serve at least 500,000 customers in the State to provide requested data by direct upload to the benchmarking tool and associate the data with the data recipient's benchmarking tool account. (f) To ensure the validity and usefulness of covered usage data, the utility shall provide the best available consumption and other information, consistent with the utility's records as presented to account holders on the utility's customer portal and captured at the meter level. (g) Once covered usage data has been made available to a duly authorized data recipient, such data may not be deleted or altered by a utility system, except as is necessary to correct errors or reflect rebills or is affected as part of the utility's billing data retention policy. If previously provided covered usage data is changed to correct errors, notification must be provided to the data recipient. (h) Within 180 days after the effective date of this Act, the Commission shall adopt a standard form for a utility account holder to authorize the sharing of the utility account holder's covered usage data. (i) For properties that do not meet the aggregation threshold and therefore require account holder authorization, the utility shall provide covered usage data to data recipients upon account holder authorization, which: (1) may be provided in Commission-approved form; (2) may be provided in a lease agreement provision; and (3) remains valid until the account holder revokes it, regardless of how the authorization is provided. (j) Access to covered usage data under this Section shall be subject to any rules the Commission has adopted or may choose to adopt, if the rules do not conflict with this Section. (k) Except in cases where the utility has not followed processes established by this Act or the utility is grossly negligent, the utility shall be held harmless for third-party misuse of data shared under this Act and no cause of action may be initiated against the utility for such subsequent misuse. (l) A utility may file for cost recovery of the reasonable and prudently incurred costs of providing covered usage data, including establishing, operating, and maintaining data aggregation and data access services, for the Commission to evaluate. A utility shall make good faith efforts to secure federal, State, or other relevant funding for such investments in the future. Any such funding the utility receives shall be deducted from future revenue requirements. (m) The Commission may hire consultants and experts to execute their responsibilities under this Act, with the retention of those consultants and experts exempt from the requirements of Section 20-10 of the Illinois Procurement Code.

Legislative History

(Source: P.A. 104-458, eff. 6-1-26.)