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PSC Approves Tariffs Requiring That Customers Be Dropped To Default Service If Customers Not Moved To Dual Billing
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The Maryland PSC has approved tariff changes at each of the major utilities with residential electric and gas choice programs which will allow the utilities to drop residential customers to default service if the customer is not moved to dual billing upon the end of residential utility consolidated billing with purchase of receivables on December 31, 2025
In doing so, the PSC did not substantively address calls from retail suppliers to stay the current end date of December 31, 2025 for the end of residential UCB.
As previously reported, UCB with POR for grandfathered customers ends December 31, 2025. No form of UCB without POR has been authorized by the PSC (nor is any form of supplier consolidated billing generally available)
Thus, Maryland retail suppliers must serve all residential customers under dual billing starting Jan. 1, 2026.
During today's administrative meeting, PSC Staff reported that Staff has seen "some" dual billing occurring in the market
Staff also said that Staff remains willing to work with stakeholders to explore any viable and "cost effective" form of residential UCB without POR
The PSC in addressing the tariff filings did not renew or make more insistent its prior directive that the utilities and retail suppliers negotiate in "good faith" concerning all forms of billing in a post-POR world: dual, UCB, and supplier consolidated billing
Under the tariffs approved today, to the extent a supplier does not move a residential customer to dual billing prior to Jan. 1, 2026, the utilities will drop the relevant customers to default service
The PSC also generally adopted the PSC Staff's proposal on how to address residential cancel/rebills under the end of residential POR (see full details here). Generally, POR will apply if the usage date is before January 1, 2026, regardless of when the bill or re-bill occurs.
As previously reported, Pepco and Delmarva had said that, if there are any residential cancel/rebills after December 31, 2026, the supplier would need to bill the customer directly for those adjustments
PSC Staff had, in a global filing concerning cancel/rebill issues, opposed this request
However, PSC Staff did not appear to explicitly address this issue in a later-filed "buck sheet" (recommendation) concerning the Pepco/Delmarva tariffs when placed on the PSC's agenda. Staff did in the buck sheet recommend that, "Pepco and DPL [] use their current
residential POR discount rates for any post December 31, 2025 billing and cancel/rebilling
of existing residential retail choice contracts served under POR with pre-December 31,
2025 usage," with no caveat on an end date for such use of POR for pre-2026 usage. Since the current POR discount must be used, the recommendation implies that the rebills would be issued under UCB, not dual billing as originally envisioned by Pepco/Delmarva after 2026. Additionally, Staff in the buck sheet cited in a footnote the page numbers from Staff's prior recommendation in which Staff had opposed the use of dual billing for those cancels/rebills occurring after the end of 2026, ostensibly incorporating this prior proposal into Staff's buck sheet, and thus ultimately (as noted below) the PSC's letter order approving the tariffs
The PSC did not substantively discuss this specific point during its deliberations, nor in its letter orders
The letter orders for Pepco/Delmarva only conditioned tariff approval on adopting Staff's recommendations from Staff's "buck sheet", which, as noted, did not explicitly address the issue of direct billing by suppliers for cancel/rebills after December 31, 2026, though, as described above, the buck sheets may have nonetheless incorporated a position of requiring UCB with POR for all cancels/rebills related to pre-2026 usage, not only those cancels/rebills which occur in 2026.
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December 23, 2025
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Copyright 2025 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com
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