In the regulated energy industry, data is everything. As a regulator, it’s likely the backbone of all your decisions—decisions that impact utilities, markets, and ultimately, consumers.
And your go-to data source?
Often, it’s the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Which makes sense, FERC data is one of the most comprehensive sources of information available.
The downside?
Its massive volume can make it daunting to work with. For regulators and commissioners, sifting through hundreds—sometimes thousands—of pages to find the insights you need can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack.
That’s where we come in.
At HData, we’re redefining how utility regulators interact with FERC data, making it faster, easier, and more efficient to turn mountains of information into actionable insights.
FERC data provides an incredibly comprehensive context that regulators can take into consideration as they evaluate rate cases, assess utility performance, and analyze market trends. These insights are crucial for regulatory decisions that balance fairness to consumers with the operational needs of utilities.
Here are some specific FERC data applications:
When a utility proposes a rate increase, you may rely on FERC data to assess whether the proposed rates are just and reasonable. For instance, you may analyze a utility’s reported transmission maintenance costs, and compare them to historical filings. This can reveal whether the proposed increase aligns with industry norms or whether the utility has inefficiencies that need addressing.
As a regulator, you often monitor whether utilities meet service reliability standards. Using FERC data, you can compare metrics like outage frequency and duration against peer utilities in similar regions. If you identify, for example, that a utility’s average outage time has increased by 20% over three years, it could prompt an investigation into maintenance practices or infrastructure investment needs.
FERC filings contain a wealth of information on energy production and consumption patterns. You can use this data to track the growth of renewable energy sources like solar and wind and assess their impact on grid stability. The insights can then guide your policies around clean energy adoption. For example, you may spot a trend in reduced peak demand during the summer months which would signal the effectiveness of energy efficiency programs or increased distributed energy resource adoption.
But as valuable as FERC data is, the sheer scale of it can pose significant challenges. Without the right tools, making sense of it all can take weeks—or even months.
As a regulator, you’ve worked with FERC filings. You know how overwhelming they can be.
Each document is dense with technical, financial, and operational details. The time spent locating a single critical data point can add up quickly.
This manual approach isn’t just inefficient—it can delay decision-making and make it harder to keep up with fast-moving industry changes. Regulators need a better way to access and understand the data without sacrificing accuracy or depth of analysis.
This is exactly why we created HData.
Our AI-powered platform processes FERC data at lightning speed, allowing you to ask natural language questions and receive accurate, citable answers in seconds.
For instance, instead of combing through hundreds of pages to find the operational cost of a specific utility, you can simply ask our platform: “What were Utility X’s reported operational costs in 2022?” HData finds the answer and even points you to the exact section of the filing where the data lives.
Here’s how HData can transform your workflow:
Rate Cases: Find every detail needed to evaluate a proposed rate increase, like cost-of-service calculations, projected capital expenditures, and historical revenue trends—all in seconds.
Performance Comparisons: Quickly analyze outage data, maintenance schedules, or environmental compliance figures for multiple utilities to determine industry benchmarks and outliers.
Market Analysis: Get instant answers to questions like “How much capacity from solar installations was added in 2023?” or ‘Which utilities report the highest growth in distributed energy resources?”
When data isn’t a bottleneck, the possibilities for energy regulation expand.
Imagine being able to review rate cases with complete data confidence, compare performance metrics across multiple utilities, or spot market trends instantly – all with ease.
We believe that data should empower, not overwhelm. With HData, utility regulators can unlock the full potential of this critical resource, making smarter, faster decisions that drive progress across the energy sector.
Want to see how HData can streamline your workflow? Learn more at https://hdata.com.