New Jersey Adopts Changes to Purchase of Receivables Program

The New Jersey BPU yesterday adopted changes to the purchase of receivables programs in place at the electric and natural gas utilities.

A written order was not immediately published, and is expected to be released in the next few days.

Notably, however, is that the BPU has maintained a reversion to dual billing under the POR program under certain circumstances, as noted below.

The BPU told EnergyChoiceMatters.com that the BPU's action regarding POR included the following changes:

• The number of days that a customer may be in arrears before being reverted to dual billing has been extended to 120 days (was previously 60 days at electric utilities)

• The prior 12-month "stay-out" from utility consolidated billing which applied if the customer had been dropped to dual billing has been eliminated. Now, there is no time period that must be completed before a customer can return to utility consolidated billing, provided that arrearages have been cured to a certain threshold (unclear if this was 90 days as proposed by Staff or another value).

Additional details, including implementation issues, are expected to be addressed in the BPU's forthcoming written order.