Under voluntary curtailment utilities need do no more than provide curtailment tips to consumers, provided sufficient curtailment is being achieved equitably between states and utilities. At the direction of the state, utilities will provide individual consumers with curtailment targets. Utilities will provide retrospective, current, and forthcoming billing period curtailment target data to all consumers as directed by the state. Under mandatory curtailment the following will apply:

(1) At a minimum, utilities will provide retrospective, current, and forthcoming billing period curtailment target data to any audited consumer and to any consumer who so requests.

(2) Utilities may elect to audit up to one hundred percent of their customers, provided that each billing period minimum audit level requirements are met. Unless adjusted by the state, the minimum audit level will be at least one percent of residential consumers, five percent of general use consumers, one hundred percent of major use consumers, and any consumer whose previous billing period consumption exceeded the threshold consumption level. Such consumers will continue to be audited until their energy use falls below the threshold consumption level. Once their energy use falls below that level, they will be audited again only if selected by sample.

(3) For audit, new samples will be drawn each month. The number of consumers exempted or excluded from audit will not affect the sample size.

(4) Unless a utility is auditing one hundred percent of its residential and general use consumers, all such consumers selected for audit will be chosen on a random sample basis, except that the following consumers will be excluded:

(a) Consumers granted an exemption under this plan; and

(b) Consumers with an estimated power bill in the current billing period.

Utilities may elect to exclude residential and general use consumers with estimated base billing period data, if the state does not require their inclusion in the pool of consumers subject to audit.

(5) Any existing curtailment of load based on contractual provisions between an industrial consumer and its utility does not count towards the consumer's required curtailment obligation to the state, excepting where such curtailment represents fifty percent of the consumer's base year consumption level. This exemption may be suspended by the state under Stage 5 of mandatory curtailment.