Revision of Electricity Business Act 2020 No3(Delivery Information)

This time, let’s look at the delivery information (more specifically, the 30-minute data of a smart meter).

First, look back on the current handling of delivery information. Article 23 of the current law (prohibitions, etc.) prohibits the use of delivery information for other purposes than delivery itself. Therefore, it is impossible to use the smart meter’s 30-minute data for purposes other than delivery supply in terms of strict interpretation.

However, legal benefit protected by Article 23 is the realization of “fair competition” in the electric power industry, and the use of smart meter data is acceptable as long as this purpose is not impaired. For example, activities such as the Grid Data Bank Lab, which aims to use 30-minute data, are thought to be possible under this modest legal interpretation.

General power transmission and distribution companies have high expectations for the use of smart meters as a new business opportunity, and for this reason they should have strongly hoped that the amendment of the Electricity Business Law would ease Article 23.

This expectation is unlikely to be realized in two ways.

First of all, the range of delivery information permitted for other use than delivery itself is expected to be considerably limited. In order to maximize the use of 30-minute data, etc., it was necessary to exempt anonymously processed delivery information from Article 23.

However, the revised Electricity Business Law intends to limit the scope of exemption to “statistical information.”

Statistical information is the only aggregated data obtained from information from multiple people (for example, in Tokyo, customers who use less than 100 kWh of electricity in a certain month are 20% of the total), and the correspondence with individuals is excluded. If the use is limited to statistical information, the industrial value of the 30-minute data will be greatly reduced. The definition of this term will be finalized by the effective date of April 1, 2022, but as far as the revised bill is concerned, its use is quite limited.

Next, it is likely that a new neutral body will be created as the entity that manages the delivery information, and that it will be determined to be under the supervision of the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry(METI).

In the first place, the current Personal Information Protection Law establishes a Personal Information Protection Committee to centralize the management of personal information, etc. under the very same law to eliminate inter-ministerial intervention and avoid so-called territorial conflict. Behind this was the idea of ​​treating personal data as a source of new industrial value and maximizing its use under the Personal Information Protection Law.

This revised Electricity Business Law places the information on electricity delivery under the control of METI, and specifies that the ministry will distribute its use. Unfortunately, the egoism of METI is clearly emerging. The Personal Information Protection Law is expected to be revised in the future from the three viewpoints of privacy protection, industrial use promotion, and consideration for the international environment. However, as far as electricity data is concerned, it should be placed under METI’s so-called extraterritorial jurisdiction. Although this kind of emphasis on ministry’s profits is not new, it is important to recognize that in the medium to long term, the interests of the power industry will be impaired and that the bureaucrats of METI will face the consequences.