The Petitioners argue that standards of conduct should include, at a minimum, provisions which ensure that preference is not given to customers of affiliates, or requests for service from affiliates, relative to nonaffiliated suppliers and their customers. Also, the Petitioners argue that preferential access for affiliates to utility assets should be prohibited. Petitioners argue that the rules should state that discounts, rebates or fee waivers offered by the utility to its affiliate must be contemporaneously offered to all similarly situated nonaffiliated suppliers or customers; and that service requests made to the utility must be processed by the utility without regard to the supplier identity. NAESCO agrees, specifying that a nondiscrimination standard should apply to the terms, conditions and services related to all monopoly functions undertaken by the distribution company. It includes distribution service, default electric service, demand-side management programs, and metering and billing among the distribution companies’ monopoly functions. SCG also generally agrees with the Petitioners regarding the inclusion of nondiscrimination standards in proposed rules.
We have included nondiscrimination standards in other of our affiliate transactions rules. [ In our Rules for Gas Utility Procurement (D.91-02-022), for example, we state that "[e]mployees of the gas utilities shall not perform any functions for utility affiliates except those services which they offer to others on an equal basis…" (39 CPUC 2d at 332.) Similarly, in our Guidelines for Transactions Between Pacific and a Category III Below-the-Line Affiliate, we require the sale of tariffed goods and services from Pacific Telesis to the affiliate to be at rates governed by the tariffs. (Guidelines for Transactions Between Pacific and a Category III Below-the-Line Affiliate, p. 1.) ] It is appropriate to include nondiscrimination standards in utility-affiliate standards of conduct.