GUIDELINES TO D ETERMINE FAIRNESS OF EVAL UATION PROCESS Sample Clauses

GUIDELINES TO D ETERMINE FAIRNESS OF EVAL UATION PROCESS. The Energy Division has suggested a set of principles to guide IEs in determining if an IOU’s administration of its evaluation and selection process was fair: • Were all proposals treated the same regardless of the identity of the bidder? • Were participants’ questions answered fairly and consistently and the answers made available to all participants? • Did the utility ask for “clarifications” that provided one participant an advantage over others? • Was the economic evaluation of the proposals fair and consistent? • Was there a reasonable justification for any fixed parameters that were a part of the IOU’s LCBF methodology? • Were the qualitative and quantitative factors used to evaluate bids fair to all bids? competition enabled ratepayers to benefit from superior value compared to what would have resulted from prior efforts to seek a bilaterally negotiated contract. An e-solicitation process was far swifter than a formal request for bids would have been with the process of public outreach, an extended period for participants to prepare bids, and public issuance of a formal solicitation protocol. PG&E sought to have a contract in place shortly after the start of 2016 when river flows from winter runoff increase generation from the powerhouses providing the 60 GWh. The streamlined process allowed contract execution in February. Further delays in commencing deliveries would represent an opportunity loss to ratepayers. However, the tradeoff for timeliness was to select a winning bid through a process that was opaque to participants, did not provide feedback to losing bidders, arguably contravened the CPUC’s direction in Decision 00-00-000 by employing a qualitative criterion with little or no transparency to bidders about how that criterion was designed or applied8, and therefore could be judged to be unfair by observers.