Staff of the Public Utility Commission of Texas have posted a draft 2019 scope of electric competition report, to be presented to the Legislature

As is customary, the initial Staff draft does not include any legislative recommendations, which are later updated as needed based on Commissioners' discussions

In the report, Staff said that, "From September 1, 2016 through August 31, 2018, over a million unique and potential customers visited the Power to Choose and Poder de Escoger websites."

Specifically, from September 1, 2016 through August 31, 2018 PowerToChoose.org unique visitors were 1.36 million, and PoderDeEscoger.org unique visitors were 5,700.

In prior scope reports, the aggregate visitor data included the .com domains of the sites as well as the .org domains; we presume the same methodology was applied in this year's scope report.

A direct comparison to prior-year data was not available. As previously reported, in the prior scope report, Staff had said that from September 2015 to August 2016 (only a one year period), the Texas PUC's PowerToChoose website (including the Spanish-language domain) recorded some 985,000 unique visitors

Based on October 2018 active residential ESI ID data, as filed by the investor-owned TDUs located within ERCOT in their monthly switch-hold reports, the number of active residential ESI IDs with electric choice in ERCOT is about 6.3 million.

In other words, over a two-year period, about 21% of Texas residential customers visited the Power to Choose sites.

While not an insignificant number, it reinforces that most customers do not use the site to shop for a retail electric provider, which was first noted by us in 2016. Concerns about products on the site, and the future of the site and its price listings, should be evaluated in light of this fact

While visitor stats alone may not justify the elimination of the site's rate listings, stakeholders need to be honest that the vast majority of Texans choose to navigate the electric market without visiting the site.

Link to draft scope report