By Darren Fishell
BDN Staff
PORTLAND — Billing problems at Emera Maine and transmission rate hike requests have prompted Maine regulators to consider opening an audit of the utility’s management.
Staff of the Maine Public Utilities Commission on April 5 issued a recommendation that the three-member commission open such an investigation.
The commission will consider that recommendation at a future meeting, as part of the company’s request to raise transmission rates in 2017. The requested increase would raise rates $2.40 a month for the average customer.
Commission staff suggested an investigation because of cost overruns with implementation of the company’s new customer information system, service outages, improperly dated bills and excessive charges to customers getting electricity from competitive energy providers, among other issues.
A representative from Emera Maine said last week it would be premature for the company to comment on the draft order.
In their draft order, staff said that they wanted to determine whether the company properly managed three major programs: the first phase of implementing its customer information system, its credit and collections operations and the management of its transmission and distribution system.
Regulatory staff said it found during the latest rate case that the cost to implement the company’s new customer information system was about 50 percent higher than initially projected in 2014, at $30.1 million rather than $17.3 million.
They wrote that the new system also caused billing problems, including not stopping billing for customers who discontinued buying their electricity supply from a competitive energy provider.
About 8.5 percent of all Emera Maine residential customers in its Bangor Hydro Electric District got their power from a competitive electricity provider in February.
Regulators also said the company had problems delivering refunds to customers of the competitive provider People’s Power and Gas, which fell into bankruptcy in 2015. Regulators said last year that about 2,800 Emera Maine customers were in line to get refunds.
If approved, the PUC audit would probe whether the company mismanaged any of its upgrades, billing or transmission and distribution system. The company would pay for an audit, the cost of which it could later recover from ratepayers.
The order, if approved, would call for the audit to be completed before new rates are scheduled to take effect Dec. 21, 2016. The company or other parties have until April 11 to respond to the recommendation, issued April 5.
