ComEd POR Approved with 50¢ Per Bill Charge

As first reported in our live blog yesterday, the Illinois Commerce Commission has approved tariffs to institute utility consolidated billing and Purchase of Receivables at Commonwealth Edison.

A written order was not issued yesterday (Docket 10-0138).

Based on the discussion at the ICC's bench session, the discount rate mechanism will rely on a 50¢ per bill fee to recover implementation costs as provided for under a memorandum of understanding between ComEd, the Illinois Competitive Energy Association, and Retail Energy Supply Association. The Citizens Utility Board also endorsed this recovery mechanism.

The 50¢ fee was opposed by ICC Staff and Dominion Retail as placing a disproportionate amount of cost recovery on residential customers.

Though not discussed at the bench session, the POR discount rate would also include an uncollectible component, as a percent of receivables, in addition to the flat 50¢ charge. The ICC did not discuss what rate the final order will use for uncollectibles, or whether it is class-specific or combined for residential and non-residential customers.

The ICC also did not discuss an implementation date in adopting a final order.

POR would be available to residential customers and commercial customers under 400 kW.

The ICC has directed the Office of Retail Market Development to study POR implementation, and, at Ameren, examine why POR has not led to more residential offerings, and if the structure of POR or other market dynamics (such as RTO issues) is the cause of the dearth of residential offers at Ameren.

Speaking with Matters yesterday, Constellation Energy lauded the ICC for its continued efforts to open the retail market and taking steps to establish regulatory certainty necessary to support mass market choice. Constellation said it is awaiting the written order to confirm details of the POR program before further considering any plans for the ComEd residential market.

Regarding its application to serve Pennsylvania residential customers reported by Matters yesterday (12/15), Constellation did not wish to discuss any utility-specific target markets at this time.