PG&E Files to Implement New Direct Access Service Fees

Pacific Gas & Electric has filed an application with the California PUC to modify the fees charged for various services provided to electric service providers and community choice aggregators, which includes an increase in certain consolidated billing fees.

PG&E's proposal would largely consolidate existing fees into three categories: Meter Service Composite Fees, with a proposed cost of $460.37 per interval meter service request; Meter Data Management Fees, with a proposed cost of $8.27 per interval meter; and Billing Services, with a proposed cost of $1.50 per Service Account per billing cycle.

The new category Billing Services, for which the charge is $1.50 for each service within that category, includes the charges for monthly rate ready and bill ready consolidated billing, revisions in the rate ready prices, bill adjustments, and other services. Depending on the particular service, the currently tariffed rate is above or below that proposed $1.50 charge.

For example, the current rate ready billing fee is 40¢ per account per billing cycle, and the current bill ready billing fee is 44¢ per account per billing cycle. However, price changes under rate ready billing are currently $5.00.

The Meter Service Composite Fee category includes an interval meter (required for certain direct access customers) base charge as well as an installation charge. The current base charge is $142.49 and the current installation charge is $158.32.

The proposed $1.50 level for Billing Services, as well as the proposed Meter Service Composite Fee, is actually below PG&E's forecast cost of providing such services in 2012, as PG&E said that raising these fees to reflect the full cost of service would produce "rate shock."

"PG&E's pricing proposals attempt to strike a balance between the economic efficiency of cost-based prices and rate-shock due to the current mismatch between costs and prices. PG&E proposes to balance these two competing rate-design principles by moving fees halfway between 100 percent cost-based and current fees," PG&E said.

PG&E does not seek to add the under-collected balance to future revenues.

The 2012 forecast cost (per request per month) for each category is $754.21 for the Meter Service Composite Fee; $7.06 for the Meter Data Management Fee; and $2.57 for Billing Services.

Furthermore, PG&E, "views an immediate increase in Metering Services from $166.53 to the proposed $460.37, which is almost a 3 multiple increase for each Interval Meter Service Request, as prohibitive."

Therefore, PG&E proposed to implement these new metering fees six months after the fees are approved by the PUC. PG&E noted that this delay will provide ESPs with an opportunity to seek other third-party meter service providers to provide the metering services, as the services included under the fee are "discretionary" and need not be provided by PG&E.