FERC approved changes to its rules regarding filing “electric quarterly reports” (EQRs) at its regular meeting with the issuance of Order 917.

The changes include updates to how EQRs must be formatted, clarifications of reporting requirements, and a new requirement for ISO/RTOs to produce reports containing market participant transaction data, according to the order issued March 19.

“The commission adopted the EQR as the reporting mechanism for public utilities to fulfill their responsibility under FPA Section 205(c) to have information relating to their rates, terms and conditions of service available for public inspection in a convenient form and place,” FERC said in the order. “The commission established the EQR in 2002 with the issuance of Order No. 2001.”

The changes are meant to update and streamline data collection, improve data quality and increase market transparency. They are expected to cut costs of preparing the needed data and complying with future changes to EQR requirements.

The new rules adopt a single method for EQR reports based on the “XBRL-CSV standard,” which would preserve the efficiency and simplicity of the existing CSV model while adding the flexibility of the XBRL standard. XBRL is a business information standards group. CSV refers to “comma separated values,” a text file used to store tabular data. FERC said adopting the standard would make the process more efficient.

The due date for EQRs was extended to four months after the relevant quarter ends, rather than requiring them to come in after a month.

ISO/RTOs have a new requirement to prepare and make available transaction data reports to their market participants based on the settlement data generated by the organized markets for sales made by market participants within them. The requirement will help sellers prepare to submit transaction data in the EQR and will cut the amount of manual data manipulation prior to submission.

Market sellers in ISO/RTOs still will have to submit their own EQRs and will be responsible for ensuring the accuracy of its EQR data.

The ISO/RTO reports will reflect sellers’ transactions within the relevant market in which the operator is a counterparty. Those ISO/RTO reports will be due by the end of the following quarter.

The data in the ISO/RTO reports should correspond with the markets’ clearing, dispatch and settlements, which generally is in 5-minute increments. One party suggested combining that 5-minute data into hourly data, but FERC said that might hinder its ability to protect customers from unjust and unreasonable rates and reduce transparency into market pricing.