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PURA Grants CL&P Extension For Compliance With Specific Directive In Supplier Summary Information Order

January 24, 2019

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Copyright 2010-19 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com

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The Connecticut PURA has granted Connecticut Light & Power an extension to comply with Order No. 6 from PURA's December 2018 order on changes to the Supplier Summary Information requirements.

Order No. 6 had provided that CL&P (Eversource) shall modify the text on bills that is used to display the Next Cycle Rate on or before March 1, 2019 such that the text would include the specific month and would read "[Month] Cycle Rate". Currently, CL&P uses the text "Next Cycle Rate" without identifying the specific month to which it applies

"Displaying the month is intended to increase consumer understanding about when the Next Cycle Rate will be assessed and to create consistency among the EDCs as to how this information is provided to customers," PURA had said in its December order

CL&P had sought an extension for compliance with this directive, until May 1, 2019, stating that, "Eversource is currently in the process of making the following extensive changes to its bill design and bill text to accommodate other changes and needs that are independent of the supplier-related issues examined in this Docket."

CL&P said in its motion that, under these other initiatives that require extensive changes to the bill design and text, Eversource is:

• Transitioning additional complex bill types to its new bill design, which includes large Time of Use (TOU) customers, energy efficiency loans, unmetered and multiple service accounts.

• Merging existing separate bills for security deposit requests with a customer’s metered service bill resulting in all charges appearing on a single bill for the customer.

CL&P said in its motion that, "The above-described initiatives require extensive bill print file design, development, coordination and testing between our Eversource team, our internal I.T. (TCS) business partners and our external bill composition and print vendor team (Kubra). At this point in time, both Eversource and our two business partners have completed a significant amount of work and we are currently in the process of conducting our final User Acceptance Test (UAT) phase of the project for the aforementioned changes, which are expected to be completed and implemented in late February 2019. All reasonable efforts are being undertaken to expedite and complete this work as scheduled."

CL&P said in its motion that, "The changes associated with Order No. 6 above involve modifying the same set of bill design and print programs that Eversource is currently testing and readying for implementation in February – and based on the scope and type of work involved – the programming and testing work required by Order No. 6 cannot be performed simultaneously with the other above-described initiatives."

CL&P said in its motion that, "In addition, even if this were a possibility, at this point in the process, attempting to incorporate any changes associated with Order No. 6 to meet a March 1, 2019 delivery, would result in Eversource and its business partners having to perform a significant amount of re-work and testing which would add additional time and cost to the project."

PURA granted CL&P's requested extension until May 1, 2019 for compliance with Order No. 6

"The Authority understands the programming changes necessary to implement bill changes; however, the Authority established the compliance deadlines in this docket based upon estimates provided by Eversource. The Authority would appreciate Eversource’s efforts to complete the work sooner, if possible, and adhere to the compliance estimates it provided as close as reasonably possible," PURA said in granting the motion

Docket 14-07-19RE05

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