E-Access Act
Summary
What This Bill Does
The E-Access Act directs the Secretary of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to issue model guidelines within 180 days for states, electric utilities, and gas utilities to give consumers and authorized third parties secure electronic access to detailed energy data. Covered data include usage, prices, billing line items, at least 24 months of history, meter and grid-edge measurements, customer account information, and information needed for energy-assistance, efficiency, demand-response, or wholesale-market programs.
The guidelines must call for machine-readable access without an added charge, data as close to real time as practicable, nationally recognized open standards, privacy and security protections, standardized consumer consent, and reasonable nondiscriminatory terms for third-party designees. Utilities should provide Green Button Connect My Data or a similar certified system with greater than 99 percent availability and publicly report authorization and onboarding performance. Electric meter software platforms should provide fair terms, documentation, application-review transparency, due process, and safeguards against self-preferencing or surveillance of competing applications.
State energy offices may ask DOE to certify their policies. Certified states may receive federal implementation funding, and the bill authorizes $10 million for fiscal year 2026. DOE and FERC must also report within one year on using individual meter data to settle wholesale electricity markets, including customer coverage, barriers to demand response, utility and market-operator costs, anticompetitive impacts, ratepayer investment, reliability, and customer choice.
Who Benefits and How
Electric consumers and natural-gas consumers benefit from free, portable, timely access to their usage, prices, bills, and account data. Authorized energy-data software developers and demand-response providers benefit from standardized consent, nondiscriminatory onboarding, platform documentation, due process, and limits on utility self-preferencing. State energy offices benefit from implementation grants after DOE certification. Wholesale-market participants may benefit if the required study supports broader meter-data settlement.
Who Bears the Burden and How
Electric utilities and gas utilities would need to build or maintain secure machine-readable access, meet availability and certification expectations, report performance, process third-party authorizations, and protect consumer privacy. Electric meter platform operators must disclose performance and application-review procedures and address competition concerns. DOE and FERC staff must consult stakeholders, issue and update guidelines, certify state policies, administer grants, and complete the wholesale-market report. Federal energy appropriations bear the $10 million authorization.
Key Provisions
- Requires joint DOE-FERC model data-sharing guidelines within 180 days.
- Calls for no-charge, machine-readable access to at least 24 months of detailed electric and natural-gas information.
- Requires secure standardized consumer consent and reasonable nondiscriminatory third-party access terms.
- Calls for Green Button or similar certification, greater than 99 percent system availability, and public utility performance reporting.
- Establishes fair-access, documentation, due-process, and anti-self-preferencing rules for electric meter software platforms.
- Allows DOE certification of state access policies and grants for certified state programs.
- Authorizes $10 million for fiscal year 2026.
- Requires a DOE-FERC report on costs and benefits of individual meter-data settlement in wholesale electricity markets.
Evidence Chain:
This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers with clause-level evidence links.
At a Glance
What This Bill Does
Directs DOE and FERC to create model standards for consumers and authorized third parties to obtain portable electric and natural-gas usage, price, billing, and meter data, backed by state implementation grants and utility performance rules.
Key Policy Areas
Energy, Consumer Data, Electric Utilities, Natural Gas Utilities, Competition, Federal Grants
Primary Purpose
Directs DOE and FERC to create model standards for consumers and authorized third parties to obtain portable electric and natural-gas usage, price, billing, and meter data, backed by state implementation grants and utility performance rules.
Policy Domains
Sections 2 and 3 consumer energy-data access
Identified Gains
- Electric consumers
- Natural-gas consumers
- Energy-data software developers
- Demand-response service providers
- State energy offices
- Wholesale electricity market participants
Identified Costs
- Electric utility data-system operators
- Natural-gas utility data-system operators
- Electric meter platform owners
- DOE data-access program staff
- FERC wholesale-market analysis staff
- Federal energy appropriations accounts
Sponsors
Legislative Progress
In CommitteeReferred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Introduced in House
Mr. Mullin (for himself and Mr. Levin) introduced the following …
Stakeholder Effects
cui bono?How this legislation distributes effects. Mention counts reflect frequency, not effect magnitude.
Electric consumers seeking portable usage data, Electric meter platform owners, Electric utilities subject to E-Access definitions
Positive-direction: Electric consumers seeking portable usage data
Negative-direction: Electric meter platform owners, Electric utility data-system operators
DOE data-access program staff, FERC wholesale-market analysis staff, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
Natural-gas consumers seeking portable usage data, Natural-gas utilities subject to E-Access definitions, Natural-gas utility data-system operators
Positive-direction: Natural-gas consumers seeking portable usage data
Negative-direction: Natural-gas utility data-system operators
Demand-response service providers, Energy-data software developers, Energy-data software developers using defined platforms
State energy offices implementing certified access programs
Bill Structure & Actor Mappings
Who is "The Secretary" in each section?
- "secretary"
- → Secretary of Energy
- "commission"
- → Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
- "gas_utility"
- → Gas utility serving a gas consumer
- "electric_utility"
- → Electric utility serving an electric consumer
- "state_energy_office"
- → State office responsible for the State energy conservation plan
Key Definitions
Terms defined in this bill
A utility meter and accompanying software that can run applications on a grid-edge computer to analyze or transmit retail energy information or consumer insights.
The maintained national standard enabling consumers to access and securely transmit retail electric or natural-gas information.
Customer usage, prices, billing line items, meter measurements, grid-edge insights, account details, and program-eligibility information.
Customer gas usage, prices, billing line items, meter data, account details, and program-eligibility information.
We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.
Learn more about our methodology