FirstEnergy Pennsylvania Utilities See Significant Drop in Industrial Migration

Three of FirstEnergy's Pennsylvania distribution companies saw a significant decrease in industrial customer migration for the most recent week, according to the latest statistics from the Pennsylvania PUC.

Link to 11/2/11 Weekly Migration Report

Matters has also compiled a comparison of the migration levels from the 10/26/11 Report to the 11/2/11 Report.

Link to Matters' Comparison of Weekly Migration

At Penelec, from October 27 to November 2, industrial customer migration decreased by 233 accounts, which represents nearly 25% of the migrated customer base in the industrial class as of October 26, 2011.

At Met-Ed, during the same period, industrial customer migration decreased by 107 accounts, which represents 13% of the migrated customer base in the industrial class as of October 26, 2011.

At Penn Power, during the same period, industrial customer migration decreased by 15 accounts, which represents nearly 10% of the migrated customer base in the industrial class as of October 26, 2011.

Typically, weekly industrial migration is only a handful of accounts in either direction.

Despite the large declines in the number of migrated industrial accounts, the percent of migrated accounts increased significantly (from 56% to 82% at Met-Ed; from 57% to 87% at Penelec, and 69% to 97% at Penn Power). Moreover, the amount of migrated industrial load showed little variance. Accordingly, the decrease in industrial customer account migration could either represent a reclassification of accounts to the commercial class (the commercial numbers are a bit higher than usual), or perhaps a change in how customer meters versus accounts are tallied.

Meanwhile, residential growth migration for the week exceeded 1,000 accounts at four utilities.

Residential migration continued to recover at PPL, with growth of 2,235 migrated residential accounts from October 23 to October 29. This is up from the week-ago growth of 1,481, and is the highest weekly residential migration growth in several months.

PECO again posted weekly residential migration growth of 2,400 accounts, even with the week-ago growth.

Penelec weekly residential migration growth was about 1,500 accounts, essentially even with the week-ago growth and more than double the growth from two weeks ago.

West Penn Power weekly residential migration growth was 1,350 accounts, up from 1,100 a week ago.