Skip to main content Skip to office menu Skip to footer
Capital IconMinnesota Legislature

Data access could aid energy decisions — or invade your privacy

Should you purchase an electric vehicle? Would converting to solar energy make sense for your home or business? How much money would you save by weatherizing your home? And how will you figure out the answers to those questions?

You may need some data. The kind of data that public utilities keep on electricity and natural gas usage and how much they cost. But current law doesn’t require those utilities to share such data with customers.

HF1683 would change that.

Sponsored by Rep. Jamie Long (DFL-Mpls), it’s designed to aid utility customers in their quests to make sound energy decisions with the help of their own energy use data – and that of other customers.

And that was the sticking point for opponents of the bill. How much information about the energy use of others will a utility customer be able to access? How anonymous is their data to hackers, burglars, terrorists or, for a company, its competitors?

The bill was held over Thursday by the House Energy and Climate Finance and Policy Division for possible omnibus bill inclusion. It has no Senate companion.

Long said smart meters are now in half of U.S. homes and that they can help customers make smarter decisions.

“Customers will have access to detailed personal energy use data,” Long said. “The bill also reinforces the customer’s right to give their information to third parties to access their data. This can be, for example, to ask for services to help them save money. And it allows secure, anonymous and aggregated utility data to be given to third parties for the purpose of research and development, such as by a university to study energy trends or by a city to help meet its sustainability goals.”

On the latter point, Joseph Pereira, regulatory director for the Citizens Utility Board of Minnesota, said, “Our sister agency, CUB Illinois, has conducted analysis from real-time usage data that would fall under the provisions of this bill for over 300,000 anonymous customers. Through this analysis, they determined that 97 percent of customers in the study would benefit from a different pricing structure. They took action and, through this analysis, saved customers nearly $30 million.”

As for security, Pereira said, “The utility industry is at the forefront of cybersecurity. This continues that tradition and protects customers in a proactive way.”

But Jody Londo, a regulatory specialist for Xcel Energy, wasn’t so sure.

“Anyone could get information about as few as 15 homes,” she said. “With smart meters, that data could reveal a lot about those homes. … We also believe that this poses security risks for our system overall. Anyone could request and the utility would be required to provide information about connection points on our system. That could be a substation, a feeder, a transformer that could arm someone wanting to do harm to the system.”

Republican members expressed concern about the requirements causing hardship for small utilities.

Rep. Chris Swedzinski (R-Ghent) unsuccessfully offered a pair of amendments, one eliminating the section of the bill requiring utilities to provide public access to data, the other limiting affected utilities to those who serve over 10,000 customers. Both were defeated on a party-line vote.


Related Articles


Priority Dailies

Minnesota’s projected budget surplus balloons to $3.7 billion, but fiscal pressure still looms
(House Photography file photo) Just as Minnesota has experienced a warmer winter than usual, so has the state’s budget outlook warmed over the past few months. On Thursday, Minnesota Management and Budget...
Legislative leaders announce 2024 committee deadlines
(House Photography file photo) Legislators and the public officially know the timeline for getting bills through the House committee process during the upcoming 2024 session. Here are the two deadlines fo...

Minnesota House on Twitter