Washington Gas Light to Begin Purchasing Maryland Supplier Receivables with July Billing Cycle

Washington Gas Light will begin purchasing the receivables of Maryland competitive gas suppliers with bills rendered on and after June 29, 2011, which is the start of the July billing cycle.

The discount rate for the first year of the POR program will be 4.39% for residential accounts, and 0.83% for non-residential accounts. Such amounts were derived after the Commission ordered WGL to use a two-year amortization of implementation costs, rather than a longer period which would have lowered the discount rates.

The discount rate includes a bad debt component, IT implementation cost component, incremental collection cost component, risk factor (set at 0% for year one), and reconciliation factor.

The reconciliation factor does not currently allow WGL to include in the POR reconciliation over- or under-collections due to changes in bad debt versus the underlying bad debt component. WGL is still seeking rehearing to allow such reconciliation of bad debt (as permitted at the other utilities), especially as the PSC has set the risk factor at zero.

The PSC directed WGL to track any late fees that are assessed and collected on consolidated bills and to disclose that data when it files its next POR discount rates.

WGL will not purchase any "non-commodity" charges.

WGL's compliance filing, effective June 24, also formally adopts other provisions under COMAR 20.59 regarding customer enrollments, uniform electronic transactions, and electronic bill view access for suppliers.

PSC Letter Order on WGL POR

WGL Compliance Tariff