| Promoting Wholesale Competition Through Open Access Services by Public Utilities
Recovery of Stranded Costs by Public Utilities and Transmitting Utilities | Docket No. RM95-8-000 Docket No. RM94-7-001 |
The Open Access Final Rule and the Stranded Cost Final Rule specify filing requirements to be followed by public utilities that own, control or operate transmission facilities in interstate commerce in making non-discriminatory open access tariff filings and filings to recover legitimate, prudent and verifiable stranded costs. The information collection requirements of the final rules are attributable to FERC-516 "Electric Rate Filings." The current total annual reporting burden for FERC-516 is 828,300 hours.
The Open Access Final Rule requires public utilities filing non-discriminatory open access tariffs to provide certain information to the Commission. The Commission estimated that the public reporting burden for the information collection would average 300 hours per response. This estimate included time for reviewing the requirements of the Commission's regulations, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the necessary data, completing and reviewing the collection of information, and filing the revised information. No comments on the burden estimate were received. Because the Final Rule adopts essentially the same information requirements that are contained in the proposed rule, we believe that the average filing burden is same for the Final Rule.
In the proposed rule, the Commission noted that there are approximately 328 public utilities, including marketers and wholesale generation entities. We initially estimated that 137 public utilities own, control or operate facilities used for the transmission of electric energy in interstate commerce, and would be subject to the filing requirements of the proposed rule. Upon further review, the Commission believes that approximately 166 public utilities will respond to the information collection. Accordingly, the public reporting burden is estimated to be 49,800 hours.
In the supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking, the Commission estimated that the information requirements of the proposed rule would not differ substantially from those contained in the initial proposed rule. In that notice, the Commission estimated that the public reporting burden for the information requirements contained in the proposed rule would be 50 hours per response with 10 responses annually. No comments on this filing burden were received. The information requirements adopted in the Stranded Cost Final Rule are not substantially different from those in the proposed rule. Therefore, the Commission concludes that there will be no additional public filing burden associated with the Stranded Cost Final Rule.
Convergence Research - 5/2/96