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Pa. PUC Grants Waiver To Utility To Extend Current Default Service Rates For Additional Three Months (Skips Scheduled Change)

August 4, 2017

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Copyright 2010-17 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com

The Pennsylvania PUC granted a petition from the UGI electric and natural gas utilities for waivers authorizing the utilities to maintain their current default service rates through November 30, 2017, rather than enacting scheduled changes otherwise required on September 1, 2017, and, for electricity, to extend the period of time for any subsequent reconciliation.

The UGI utilities sought the authority to skip the September 1 default service rate changes due to a new billing system transition.

UGI Utilities - Gas Division, UGI Penn Natural Gas, and UGI Central Penn Gas are otherwise required to update their Purchased Gas Cost (PGC) on September 1. UGI Utilities - Electric Division is otherwise required to update its Generation Supply Service Rider 1 (GSR-1), for non-hourly customers, on September 1. All four utilities sought waivers to not change such default service rates on September 1, and to maintain their supply rates as last changed on June 1

"The Companies are in the process of implementing a new Customer Information System ('UNITE') that impacts, among other things, the billing systems for all of the Companies. The Companies currently intend to shut down their existing legacy customer information systems on September 1, 2017, and go-live with UNITE on September 5, 2017. Going live with the new UNITE system is a very complex cut-over process and is one that presents substantial challenges for the Companies. Implementing a rate change during the transition process presents additional risk that can be mitigated by suspending the rate changes that would otherwise become effective on September 1, 2017. Because these rate changes are related to PGC and GSR-1 reconcilable rate mechanisms, the impact of such rate change suspension will be one that rolls forward related over/under collections existing as of September 1, 2017, to the subsequent quarterly recalculation period on December 1, 2017," the utilities had said in their original petition

"Therefore, the Companies respectfully request one-time waivers of the quarterly filing requirements for the PGC and GSR-1 rates effective September 1, 2017, and propose that the current PGC and GSR-1 rates, which became effective June 1, 2017, remain in effect for the three-month period commencing September 1, 2017 through November 30, 2017," the utilities had said in their original petition

Any differences in the revenues recovered under the PGC charges and GSR-1 rate and the costs incurred during that three-month period will start to be recovered (or refunded) in the PGC charges and GSR-1 rate effective December 1, 2017.

However, UGI Electric was also granted a waiver of its tariff to allow it to collect or refund these over/under collections over a six-month period, instead of a three-month period.

The UGI natural gas utilities will refund or collect over/under collections over a 12-month period under their existing tariffs without a need for any waiver.

The utilities were directed to monitor costs through November and make an interim filing updating the default service rate as needed.

Specifically, for the gas LDCs, the LDCs shall make an interim Purchased Gas Cost filing if the Purchased Gas Cost rate changes more than 20% during this monitoring period.

"We recognize that implementing rate changes during the transition process for the UNITE system would present substantial challenges for the UGI Companies. Therefore, we agree with the UGI Companies’ request to waive the September 1, 2017 rate changes relative to its Purchased Gas Cost and Generation Supply Service Rider 1 rates. We also agree with UGI EDC’s request to reconcile the over/under collection of the GSR-1 default service rate over a six-month period beginning December 1, 2017," the PUC said in granting the waiver

Docket P-2017-2609398

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