Utility Files To Introduce POR With 5% Discount

Fitchburg Gas and Electric Light Company d/b/a Unitil has filed at the Massachusetts DPU to implement a purchase of receivables program with a 5% discount rate for residential customers.

Under Unitil's proposal, the initial POR discount, or Standard Complete Billing Percentage discount, would be 5.16% for the Residential class and 1.96% for the Small & Regular General classes.

The discount reflects the sum of uncollectibles and administrative costs, and in the future will include a reconciliation (past period reconciliation)

The initial uncollectibles percentages are 4.78% for the Residential class and 1.58% for the Small General & Regular General customer classes

The initial administrative cost percentage is 0.38% for all classes.

POR would only be available to the Residential and Small General & Regular General customer classes. Unitil would not offer POR for its largest customers, the GD-3 rate class.

Unitil's proposed program also differs from the programs in place at the other Massachusetts utilities in that Unitil proposes to make a single monthly remittance of receivables encompassing all eligible classes to each supplier, rather than sending numerous smaller remittances over the course of a month. Unitil also does not propose to more heavily discount existing receivables by age, with the initial POR discounts listed above applied to both the purchase of existing receivables and to the purchase of supplier receivables that accrue after the implementation of the POR mechanism.

Unitil proposes to implement POR within 60 days of a DPU order approving its plan

Unitil said that retail suppliers have indicated support for its proposed mechanism.

Docket 15-POR-04