Results of Conference Call, 8-13-98

MUG Members, California-Certified MSPs, and California-Registered ESPs,

The MDMA Users Group (MUG) held a conference call this morning, August 13,
1998. The MUG's mission is to reach consensus on technical MDMA issues
requiring immediate attention and which do not require Commission action;
agreements represent consensual agreements between the market participants
to implement changes that improve data exchange and reduce transaction
costs. Membership is open to any market participant interested in MDMA
issues. The agenda and call-in number were widely distributed, via e-mail,
to the UDCs, MDMAs, MSPs, and ESPs in California. 

Participants in the conference call included (alphabetically):

ABB
CellNet
Energy Interactive
Enron
LG&E
PacifiCorp
PG&E
SCE
SDG&E

The agenda items and results were as follows:

1. Posting data for non-metered Service Delivery Points. The MUG agreed to
use UNMETERED in the meter identification field in the California Meter
Exchange Protocol to identify service delivery points which do not have
meters (streetlights, etc.). This agreement is effective immediately, so
MDMAs can implement this change into their systems as they wish.

2. Addition to CMEP of a flag to indicate opening and closing meter reads.
The MUG reviewed SDG&E's proposed action flags. These flags would identify
the characteristics of some meter reads that are other than standard reads.
Codes include meter change set, meter change removal, new service, meter
removal no set, final read, credit turn off read, turn on, and reset read.
The MUG agreed that such a flag should be adopted as part of CMEP. In
addition, the MUG agreed that additional detail and specificity is needed
prior to adopting the specific codes and deciding where the field should be
added in the record format. SDG&E will develop a revised draft of its
proposal, including input from the other UDCs. The MUG will schedule a
conference call after the revised draft is issued; the call will probably
be early the week of August 24th. A major reason the MUG felt it important
to work on this flag is to define in detail the business needs/activities
to feed into the CMEP to EDI migration work being led by ORA (Jim Price).
Another MUG goal is to coordinate with national standards via the UIG; ABB
(Kathy Smith) will represent the MUG at the UIG meetings the week of August
24th.

3. VEE-clarification of holidays. The MUG agreed to use the following
priority sequence to look for holidays when estimating data in cases when
holiday data is missing:

a. Holidays in the current billing period
b. Holidays in the historical data (90 days)
c. Sundays in the current billing period
d. Sundays in the historical data (90 days)

4. VEE-power failure intervals. The MUG agreed that the simplest and least
costly approach to interpolate missing data in the rare instance of missing
data adjacent to a power outage is to continue the current practice of
using the power failure intervals to interpolate.

5. VEE-prorating data, bad intervals. In the rare instance where one of the
intervals in a data section being prorated is invalid - for example, has a
pulse overflow - the MUG agreed to prorate the good intervals in the
section, then estimate the invalid intervals using normal estimation rules.

6. Reposting of data, how to notify recipient parties. The MUG discussed
flags for resent data, adjusted data, and reframed data. ABB and PG&E have
proposals. The MUG agreed that these issues might be resolved via the
action flags being developed for CMEP (Item 2 above). SDG&E will
consolidate the ABB and PG&E input as part of the action on Item 2, for
discussion in the subsequent conference call.

7. Update on Service Delivery Point Identifier. Various parties, including
the UDCs, are near agreement on a consensus letter to be submitted to the
CPUC.

8. New item. The MUG agreed with Enron's proposal that MDMAs, and market
participants more generally (ESPs, MSPs), design one or more data
transactions to verify that all parties have the correct account, meter,
and other identifiers needed to exchange data. One transaction would be as
part of the "communication verification" data transaction five days after a
meter is installed. Enron will write up its proposal for discussion at the
next MUG conference call. This is also an issue of interest for the
Customer Data Transactions working group.

Please e-mail me with any questions.

Thanks,

Chris King
CellNet



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