Every benchmarking law works the same way at the data layer: twelve months of whole-building energy use has to land in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager before you can file. Getting it there is the step that actually blows deadlines, because the data belongs to your utilities, each utility runs its own request process on its own clock, and none of those clocks care about your filing date. This guide walks the actual process at the six utilities our clients deal with most, LADWP, SCE, SoCalGas, and PG&E in California, and Con Edison and National Grid in New York, with every processing time and consent rule taken from the utility's own published pages in July 2026. Whether your building must file at all is a threshold question; our city-by-city threshold guide answers that one.
The clocks: when to request data for a May 1 or June 1 deadline
The single most useful fact in this guide is that the utilities publish their own lead times, and the slowest one is measured in a month or more, not days. Here is every published number, next to the deadline it has to beat.
| Utility | Published timing | What it means for your deadline |
|---|---|---|
| LADWP (LA electric + water) | Application processing "may take 4-6 weeks"; LA's benchmarking guidance recommends requesting data "no later than March 1st" for the June 1 EBEWE deadline | First-year LADWP setups are a Q1 task. An application filed in May will likely miss June 1 |
| Con Edison (NYC electric + gas) | Prior-year data "completed by March 1st"; share your property "at least two weeks prior to the May 1 deadline" | The data exists March 1; the two-week floor is the minimum, not the plan |
| PSEG Long Island | Request "no later than April 1" to guarantee data in time for May 1 (per NYC's LL84 guidance) | The only hard request-by date NYC publishes |
| SCE (Southern California electric) | Data posts "in 1-5 business days" after a valid Data Sharing Key is entered and any tenant consents are in | Fast once set up; the setup and any consents are the long pole |
| National Grid (NYC gas) | Up to 24 hours to validate a first share request; uploads "within 2-5 business days"; historical add-ons up to 7 business days | Days, not weeks, if the share is done correctly the first time |
| SoCalGas (SoCal gas) | Portfolio Manager connection requests "typically take 24 hours"; no published turnaround for the aggregated report itself | Budget buffer time; the report turnaround is not published |
One more clock hides inside the Los Angeles ordinance itself: EBEWE's utility-delay fee waiver only protects owners who requested their data at least eight weeks before the deadline and answered utility follow-ups promptly. Request in April and the waiver is off the table even though the delay was the utility's.
Who needs tenant consent, and who does not
Owners routinely assume they need every tenant's signature to see whole-building data. Usually they do not. Both states draw a privacy line based on how many utility accounts the building has, and above the line the utility aggregates all tenant usage into one building total without any consent.
- California (AB 802): aggregated whole-building data is released without tenant authorization when the building has 3 or more active accounts (none residential) or 5 or more accounts (at least one residential) for that fuel, per CEC guidance and the utilities' implementations (PG&E publishes the thresholds verbatim). Below the line, each account holder authorizes release: SoCalGas uses the CISR form, SCE requires each tenant's consent through its benchmarking system, PG&E uses an online web-services authorization, and LADWP instead requires proof of ownership when a building has fewer than 3 active commercial meters.
- New York City: for properties on the city's Covered Buildings List, Con Edison's portal provides aggregated whole-building data without tenant consent; its PSC-required privacy screen (the "4/50 Rule," requiring among other things at least 4 accounts) applies only to properties not on the list, which then need authorization from all tenants. National Grid in NYC and Long Island requires only online consent, no per-tenant release forms (its Massachusetts and upstate New York territories differ).
- If consent is refused or ignored (California): the CEC's FAQ says you are still required to submit a report without energy use data, and to keep the utility's notification that tenants were unresponsive or declined. A blocked request is not an exemption from filing.
The six utilities, one at a time
| Utility | Service + where | How the data arrives | History provided |
|---|---|---|---|
| LADWP | Building Benchmarking application inside My Account; requires a LADBS Building ID or CEC Benchmarking Reference Number | Automatic: syncs to Portfolio Manager twice a day once connected; recurring in later years with no new application | 5 years preset; older data by phone request |
| SCE | Benchmarking Dashboard / Automated Benchmarking Service behind an SCE.com User ID (agents can register their own) | Automatic after you enter SCE's Data Sharing Key in Portfolio Manager; spreadsheet available by email instead | 24 months on initial request |
| SoCalGas | Connect the property to SoCalGas in Portfolio Manager first, then the 3-step Benchmarking Usage Request web form | Automatic recurring updates only if the request is tied to your Portfolio Manager account; otherwise a one-time email report | Current + prior year; older data by email, outside the AB 802 program |
| PG&E | Building Benchmarking Portal (free); the portal issues a 10-digit building ID tenants use for any needed authorizations | Automatic via Portfolio Manager web services; legacy per-meter AB 1103 connections were retired in 2023 and must be re-registered as whole-building | Per portal registration |
| Con Edison | Building Energy Usage Portal (BEUP) at buildingenergyusage.coned.com; add the property, then connect and share from Portfolio Manager | Automatic via Portfolio Manager Data Exchange; "On Hold" status means the privacy check needs a Letter of Authorization | Up to 3 years |
| National Grid (Metro NY) | Share the property in Portfolio Manager first, then the EPA Portfolio Manager online form; the order is the reverse of Con Edison's | Utility pushes quarterly uploads for up to 4 years while the share link stays active | 12 months per request; 2 extra years by ad-hoc form |
Two NYC data streams do not come from these utilities at all. Water data is uploaded automatically by DEP for buildings with automatic meter readers, and the city does not accept manual water entries; if your covered property has never been shared with DEP in Portfolio Manager, that share is its own setup step. Fuel oil is the opposite: no one uploads it for you. Owners must enter each delivery manually in Portfolio Manager with the "Enter as Delivery" setting on, and ENERGY STAR requires at least 5 dated entries for the year, so a folder of delivery tickets is part of benchmarking season.
The failure modes we see every season
- Missing meters because the request only listed the primary address. SCE's FAQ says it directly: enter every service address associated with the property, not just the main one or the common-area meters. This is the most common cause of a building total that looks too low.
- Wrong meter-to-building mapping. The CEC tells owners to verify the last four characters of each meter number the utility reports against their own records, and to request corrected data if they do not match.
- A colleague's application silently took over the feed. At LADWP, whoever submits the newest benchmarking application for a building becomes the Property Admin, and the previous requester's data feed stops updating. Duplicate connection requests for the same meter produce overlapping data that has to be deleted and reshared.
- Someone unshared the property in Portfolio Manager. With National Grid, removing the share breaks the feed, and recovery requires resharing the property at Full Access, resharing the named gas meters individually, and submitting a new web form. In Portfolio Manager, accepting the property share does not accept the meter shares; those must be accepted separately.
- A legacy setup stopped working years ago. PG&E retired its per-meter AB 1103 sharing in 2023; buildings still configured that way receive nothing until re-registered as whole-building in the portal.
- The bill does not match Portfolio Manager. It should not: bills follow billing cycles, while AB 802 data is delivered by calendar month. A mismatch is not an error.
If the utility does not come through in time
- California (CEC): submit the report without energy data by the deadline using the CEC's no-data path, then resubmit once data arrives (the later submission replaces the earlier one), or request an extension with your paper trail: the CEC wants proof you acted on time and that the delay was outside your control. Keep every request confirmation and utility email.
- Los Angeles (EBEWE): the ordinance's utility-delay condition supports both a time extension and a fee waiver, but only if the data request went in at least eight weeks before the deadline. The request date is the evidence; put it on the record early.
- New York City: the Benchmarking Help Center (Help@NYCsustainability.org, 212-566-5584) is the free escalation path the city itself staffs, and Con Edison runs weekly benchmarking office hours. If a deadline is already gone, the quarterly catch-up dates cap the damage; what happens next is covered in our missed-deadline explainer on the blog.
Requesting, reconciling, and filing this data across a portfolio is the unglamorous core of what Vert Energy Group does every benchmarking season. If your buildings span more than one of these utilities, a free assessment will map which service, which consent rule, and which clock applies to each one.