Core Sector: Energy Resources and the Environment

Customer Data Access

Customer energy data have value in a variety of contexts and for multiple entities, particularly when these data are easily accessible in a standardized digital format that is amenable to analysis and sharing. Customers themselves can better understand their energy consumption patterns and behaviors and thereby make choices to reduce their overall energy bill. Owners of multi-tenant buildings with separately-metered units can get a better picture of the overall energy consumption of their property to inform investment decisions. Customers can also share their data with third-parties service providers who offer solutions that meet their needs and preferences, such as distributed generation, energy storage, rate options, and participation in demand response programs. These same third-parties can develop more effective and less-expensive product offerings if access to data is simple and low-cost.

Prompted in part by a joint letter from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Energy, NARUC considered and adopted a resolution on multi-tenant property customer data access at its 2024 Summer Policy Summit. Since then, CPI has produced additional resources on this important topic to support our members and regulatory stakeholders. The primary output was a series of webinars that provide detailed information about how customer data access and data sharing works, some of the key policy and regulatory issues related to data access and consent-based data sharing, and the actions that states are taking to facilitate data access to enable desirable outcomes regulators.

  • Customer Data Access Learning Modules
    The Customer Data Access Learning Module series includes short videos for state utility commissions that introduce the importance of consent-based energy data sharing, showing how digital authorization, supportive infrastructure, and regulatory oversight can expand customer choice and innovation while protecting privacy and addressing consumer concerns.
  • EPA: How to Enter and Manage Tenant Spaces in ENERGY STAR, December 2024
    EPA’s ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool helps building owners and tenants measure and track energy, water use, and waste, all in a secure online environment. Users of Portfolio Manager can enter information for a whole building, a campus of buildings, an individual tenant space, or even a common area within a building. This guidance describes how to properly benchmark a tenant space within a larger property, as well as how to perform related tasks such as sharing the tenant space record with your landlord, organizing your tenant space records into groups, and using Portfolio Manager reporting functionality to track the performance of your space.

  • Webinar Series: Customer Data Access, July-September, 2025
    NARUC has developed a series of webinars that will provide detailed information about how customer data access and data sharing works, some of the key policy and regulatory issues, and the actions that states are taking to facilitate data access to enable desirable outcomes regulators.

    1. Customer Data Sharing: What is it and why do we care?, July 8, 2025

The first part of this webinar explained:

  • Energy consumption data and associated use cases, particularly in the residential and small commercial sectors
  • How utilities collect and manage customer consumption/energy/billing data
  • Evolution and status of data standards such as Green Button Connect, Electronic Data Interchange, Zigbee and IEEE2030.5
  • Key industry and policy trends in customer data sharing, including data bills of rights and multi-utility data platforms

The second part of the webinar was a live technical assistance session, during which participants had the opportunity to ask questions specific to their situation and jurisdiction.

Presentation
Recording
Data Access FAQ

2. Consent-based Data Sharing, August 12, 2025

A foundational service that utilities can provide customers and their third parties–ranging from retail suppliers to solar companies–is secure, consent-based ability to share their interval energy data. This webinar will break down that process and systematically address the components of effective data-sharing, including the use of national data standards that embed privacy and security and how utilities and regulators can build on that foundation with plain-language enrollment requirements and easy customer interfaces. Experts on user experience, cybersecurity, and policy will address key features for regulators to look for and questions they can ask to determine whether a data-sharing implementation is likely to be successful for particular use cases.

Presentation
Recording
Webinar Summary

3. Policy Tools for Data Sharing, September 15, 2025

This webinar looked at tools regulators, policymakers, and utilities are using to develop more robust policies around data access, leveraging material collected on example language and policies collected from several states' data sharing decisions and dockets. Particular attention was paid to how regulatory requirements have been designed in the past and how regulators are considering new approaches to resolve historically low uptake of data tools and their ability to drive program enrollment. Experts and practitioners explored parallel industries including open banking to discuss the pros and cons of certain kinds of regulatory and performance requirements. The webinar also discussed challenges regulators face and skills that may be valuable in tackling data access questions, both incrementally and systematically.

Presentation
Recording
Customer Data Access Compendium

Funders:

NARUC is grateful to the U.S. Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology for supporting this work.

NARUC staff experts who support these activities include: