Advisory Board Recommends Making Low-Income Discount Available To Customers Of Competitive Retail Suppliers

A New Hampshire Electric Assistance Program (EAP) Advisory Board has recommended program changes that would allow customers served by competitive retail suppliers to receive the discount available to low-income customers under the Electric Assistance Program (EAP)

All electric customers pay, through the non-bypassable System Benefits Charge (SBC), for an Electric Assistance Program (EAP) whose purpose is to help low-income residential customers afford electricity

To date, the EAP discount has not been available for the portion of a bill comprising charges owed to a non-utility competitive energy supplier.

The Advisory Board has proposed changes that will permit, if approved, the EAP discount to be applied to the energy portion of the bill for those EAP participants who have chosen a competitive energy supplier that uses utility consolidated billing. With this change, all such EAP participants would receive the discount on the total bill, both delivery and energy.

To avoid the complexity associated with basing discounts on supplier rates, the Board recommended calculating the discount for competitive supply customers using the utility’s default energy service rate as a proxy. The discount would still only be applicable to each customer’s first 750 kWh of usage. All usage over 750 kWh would not be discounted

The Advisory Board recommends this approach because (1) it rewards the successful use of retail choice, (2) it limits the exposure of the EAP fund in cases where a customer is paying an unusually high rate to a competitive supplier, and (3) it avoids the billing complexity of calculating a specific discount for various suppliers and supply rates.

A key component of the Advisory Board’s proposal is a requirement that, to receive the discount on the competitive energy supply portion of the bill, only those EAP participants who have selected competitive suppliers that rely on utility consolidated billing would be able to receive the benefit on the competitive energy supply portion of the bill. Although the applicable rule. N.H. Code Admin. Rules Puc 2004.06, allows competitive suppliers to bill directly rather than relying on the distribution utility to bill on a consolidated basis, the Advisory Board believes it would be unworkable for a competitive supplier to provide the EAP discount and obtain reimbursement from the EAP fund

The Advisory Board recommends an implementation date of October 1,2018, the start of the 2018-2019 program year, for the proposed changes

Docket DE 18- 057