Order

              STATE OF ILLINOIS
ILLINOIS COMMERCE COMMISSION
Illinois Commerce Commission
On Its Own Motion
-vs-
Commonwealth Edison Company
Evaluation of experimental residential real-time pricing program
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11-0546
ORDER
By the Commission:
In a Staff Report dated April 25, 2011, the Staff of the Illinois Commerce Commission's ("Commission") Energy Division recounts amendments to Section 16-107 of the Public Utilities Act (“Act”) by PA 094-0977 requiring certain electric utilities to propose tariffs implementing experimental residential real-time pricing (“RTP”) pro-grams. The affected utilities were the Ameren Illinois Utilities (Illinois Power Company, Central Illinois Light Company, and Central Illinois Public Service Company), now Ameren Illinois Company d/b/a Ameren Illinois ("Ameren Illinois") and Commonwealth Edison Company (“ComEd”). The Commission approved ComEd's tariffs in Docket No. 06-0617. Section 16-107(b-20) of the Act requires the Commission to monitor the performance of the RTP programs and eventually determine whether the programs should be terminated or be modified, “if it determines that the program is not, after a reasonable period of time for development not to exceed 4 years, resulting in net benefits to the residential customers of the electric utility.”
The Staff Report covers the statutory requirements imposed on the utilities regarding RTP programs, notes the role of the third-party administrator, and concludes with a recommendation that the Commission initiate a proceeding to evaluate the RTP programs and determine whether the experimental real-time programs should be terminated or be modified. The Commission agrees with this recommendation. The Staff Report also recommends that proceedings initiated to evaluate the RTP programs of both Ameren Illinois and Commonwealth Edison Company be consolidated. While there are similarities between the programs, the Commission declines to adopt that recom-mendation. The significant wholesale market design differences between PJM (ComEd) and MISO (Ameren) may be a factor in this proceeding and could be difficult to efficient-ly address in a consolidated proceeding.
The determination that must be made in this proceeding is whether or not to con-tinue, modify or terminate residential RTP programs. Both utilities have basic RTP tariffs that will continue to be available to all customer classes regardless of the outcome of