Quarterly Policy Updates Help Customers Follow Regulatory Trends

The U.S. has some 3,000 electric utilities, just more than 150 of which are investor-owned. Though relatively small in number, investor-owned utilities (IOUs) serve nearly 75% of the nation’s electricity customers. Because private utilities such as these report to local regulators, it is in their best interest to understand new regulations, or regulatory trends, that may affect their operations.

That’s not always a simple endeavor, however. In the U.S., for example, utility regulation can be a messy process, with 50 different states doing 50 different things. So identifying important regulations and regulatory trends can be complicated.

To help our customers sift through the regulatory weeds, S&C this year began publishing quarterly Regulatory & Policy Updates, which list global legislative and policy initiatives designed to drive change in electricity distribution. We don’t predict what will happen; we just provide a quick summary that’s easy to consume. Click here for the Q3 2019 edition. You can also be assured of receiving copies each quarter by subscribing to S&C’s monthly e-Newsletter.

The importance of all this? Regulations dictate how many utilities get their money. When it comes to policy, there’s a lot of, ‘what are other people doing?’ That’s the intent of these updates, which is to give a quick synopsis of what’s happening in different parts of the U.S. and in different parts of the world.

To gather the contents for the publications, S&C’s regulatory team sifts through many dockets, figuring out what’s new and what’s most relevant. We also attend regulatory conferences and stakeholder meetings to understand the messages policy-makers are receiving that drive their agenda. Topics typically relate to reliability and utility remuneration, but others could pertain to such issues as climate, electric vehicles, and wildfire avoidance/recovery.

Such topics are going to affect not only our customers’ business, but ours as well—either now or in the future. We are preparing these updates to help guide utilities through the regulatory process so if a new policy does emerge, we’ll be ready to address it head on, together.