Create transparency in energy economics
SB 445 creates the Montana Transparency in Energy Economics Act, a new set of disclosure requirements aimed at making electric utility pricing and resource mix more understandable to customers. The bill would require investor-owned utilities to build and maintain a public, web-based energy dashboard that shows real-time or near-real-time information about generation resources, operating costs, grid contribution, market purchases and sales, transmission capacity, reliability events, and the factors that affect customer bills. It also directs utilities to present some of this information in a way that ties resource costs to an average residential customer’s monthly bill.
The bill separately requires public utilities, including municipal utilities, to provide quarterly power source disclosures beginning June 1, 2026. Those disclosures must identify the sources of electricity consumed by customer class, the average unit cost by source, and the mix of generation technologies serving customers, including coal, natural gas, hydroelectric, wind, solar, and any other resource type. Public utilities may include the disclosure in monthly billing statements. The act would be codified in Title 69, chapter 3, and would take effect June 1, 2026.
SB 445 would add new reporting and transparency obligations to Montana utility law, particularly for investor-owned utilities regulated by the Public Service Commission and for public utilities, including municipal utilities. It would not directly change rates or resource planning standards, but it would require utilities to collect, organize, and disclose detailed operational and cost data to customers on an ongoing basis. The bill would effectively create a new consumer-facing disclosure regime in Title 69 for electricity economics and power-source information.
The available voting history suggests the bill had support in committee, with a 13-0 vote to table in the Senate Energy, Technology & Federal Relations Committee, but the bill ultimately died in process. The bill’s stated purpose and structure indicate a pro-transparency, consumer-information approach, and there is no transcript evidence of opposition in the materials provided. Overall, the measure appears to have been viewed favorably at least at the committee stage, though it did not advance to enactment.
The main points of potential contention are the scope and feasibility of the required disclosures. Investor-owned utilities would need to develop and maintain a real-time dashboard using publicly available data, including approximations where exact real-time data are unavailable, which could raise implementation, data-sharing, and administrative burden concerns. Public utilities, including municipal systems, would also be required to provide quarterly source disclosures and identify power purchased from same-day markets, which could be seen as burdensome or difficult for smaller utilities. Another likely issue is whether the bill’s detailed cost and market reporting could expose sensitive operational information or require coordination among utilities, transmission providers, and load-serving entities.