New Jersey Provides Incentives to Utilities to Keep Customers in Arrears on POR, Utility Consolidated Billing (Cease Drops to Dual Billing)

The New Jersey BPU has provided an incentive for electric and gas utilities to keep customers in arrears on utility consolidated billing, and therefore in the POR program, instead of dropping customers to dual billing, as is standard practice.

Specifically, if the utility does not drop customers in arrears to dual billing, the utility will be relieved of certain obligations to report customer arrearages to that customer's retail supplier. Several utilities had sought a waiver of these reporting requirements given their burdensome nature, noting such information is not needed by the supplier if the customer remains in the POR program and is not dropped to dual billing.

One of these reporting requirements is the provision requiring utilities to notify the retail supplier, on the day the supplier provides the utility with a request to switch the customer, of the number of days that a customer's account is in arrears, provided the customer's account is 60 days or more in arrears.

The Board agreed that if the customer is not dropped to dual billing, there is no need for the supplier to receive the arrearage report at enrollment. Accordingly, the Board relieved utilities of the obligation to provide the arrearage report to suppliers at enrollment if they do not drop customers in arrears to dual billing, and keep such customers in the POR program.

This relief was specifically granted to Rockland Electric, New Jersey Natural Gas, South Jersey Gas, and Elizabethtown Gas, each of whom specifically sought a waiver of the enrollment arrearage report. However, the BPU adopted the policy generically, and any utility can relieve itself of the arrearage reporting requirement if it elects to cease dropping customers in arrears to dual billing.