Regulator Closes Review of Retail Supplier's Pass-Through ISO-NE Winter Reliability Surcharge Without Taking Action

The Connecticut PURA has closed a review of Liberty Power Holdings, LLC's invocation of a change-in-law provisions of a small number of commercial contracts to pass-through costs of the 2014-15 ISO-NE Winter Reliability Program

PURA had previously directed Liberty Power Holdings, LLC to provide the legal basis for the pass-through, with several of PURA's interrogatories intimating that PURA could consider the pass-through to constitute unauthorized "back-billing" under the statute.

After reviewing Liberty Power Holdings, LLC's responses, PURA issued a notice yesterday that, "The Authority has reviewed Liberty's contract and related correspondence, and hereby closes its review of this matter."

Liberty Power Holdings, LLC has explained that the pass-through applied to 135 commercial customers with contracts entered into prior to October 14, 2013. After such date, Liberty Power Holdings, LLC began reflecting ISO-NE Winter Reliability Program costs in its pricing.

Liberty Power Holdings, LLC clarified that the pass-through related to only 2014-15 ISO-NE Winter Reliability Program costs. Liberty Power Holdings, LLC explained that it elected to pass-through 2014-2015 WRP costs during the months of March, April and May 2015 because this period of time immediately followed receipt of ISO-NE settlement statements for the 3 months of the 2014-2015 WRP (December 2014, January 2015 and February 2015), which provided the company with the information necessary to calculate or project the Pass-Through charges

Therefore, Liberty Power Holdings, LLC explained that the WRP costs are being recovered on a prospective basis. Liberty Power Holdings, LLC said that Conn. Gen. Stat. §16-259a applies only to the re-billing of incorrectly billed charges.

"This Pass-Through is not a correction and re-billing or back billing of charges previously billed. This Pass -Through is a prospective billing of new, never billed charges, resulting from a Change in Law event (the WRP) and is being billed to the affected commercial customers under the Change in Law provision in their contracts," Liberty Power Holdings, LLC explained

"Although the Pass-Through has been calculated to include charges incurred from the date the obligation to Liberty Power first took effect (December 1, 2014) the Company needed information from ISO-NE settlement statements which are received on a delayed basis before it could accurately calculate the charges to customers," Liberty Power Holdings, LLC explained

According to a Liberty Power Holdings, LLC interrogatory response, the pass-through charge ranged from $14.15 to $12,996.93, the latter of which was spread across over 20 accounts for a single large commercial customer for an average of around $217.00/account/month.