This legislation, titled the Smart Meter Data Privacy Protection Act, aims to significantly limit how certain state-regulated electric utilities can use personal consumption data collected from smart meters. It establishes a strict prohibition, allowing such data to be used only for authorized operational purposes , which include billing, outage management, grid reliability, regulatory compliance, and consumer-authorized demand response programs. Crucially, utilities are forbidden from licensing, selling, monetizing, or otherwise using this data for commercial purposes. To ensure compliance, the bill mandates that each covered utility submit annual reports to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), detailing the types of personal consumption data collected, how it was used, and with whom it was shared. If a utility violates these provisions, it must credit the affected electric consumer's bill with an amount three times the revenue generated from the unauthorized use, and utilities are prohibited from recovering these costs from other consumers. The FTC is empowered to enforce these regulations, treating violations as unfair or deceptive acts or practices under existing law. Furthermore, the Act allows state attorneys general to bring civil actions to enforce its provisions on behalf of their residents, though they must notify the FTC, which retains the right to intervene. The FTC is also tasked with establishing reasonable security and retention standards for personal consumption data used for authorized operational purposes. This legislation sets a federal baseline for data privacy, explicitly stating that it does not preempt state laws that offer stronger privacy protections for electric consumer data.