PSC To Review Default Service Structure

The District of Columbia PSC will again conduct a bi-annual review of electricity Standard Offer Service starting in 2018, Cary Hinton, policy advisor to D.C. PSC Chair Betty Ann Kane, told attendees at National Energy Marketers Association Mid-Atlantic Energy Summit

While the PSC conducted such a review in 2017, Hinton said that the PSC would perform another review of SOS in 2018 to get back on its original bi-annual schedule, rather than waiting for 2019 for the next review. Hinton said that the review that would have normally been conducted in 2016 had been pushed to 2017 due to consideration of other matters, notably the Exelon-Pepco merger proceedings, taking up the PSC's resources

Hinton expects an order initiating the new SOS review to be considered at the PSC's August 8 meeting

Hinton also said that final adoption of long-running retail electric and gas supplier licensing and bonding rulemakings are to be considered at the August 8 meeting

In the most recent SOS review, the PSC considered a retail model for SOS but in a 2017 order ultimately rejected such proposals (see story here)

In its original July 2017 order (see details here) on the SOS review, the PSC also:

• Maintained utility Pepco as the SOS provider

• Maintained SOS as a full requirements wholesale product purchased via sealed-bid RFP

• Removed the current bypassable adder for SOS

• Maintained compensation to Pepco for providing SOS service, but altered the compensation to be in the form of a fixed fee instead of a volumetric charge (though the fee will still be recovered from customers volumetrically)

• Declined to adjust any other components of the SOS Administrative Charge

• Declined to institute hourly pricing for any threshold of large customers

• Declined to shorten the SOS contract lengths for any customer class

• Declined to change the current SOS bid days and procurement schedule

• Declined to terminate the minimum stay for commercial customers who return to SOS

However, on rehearing, the PSC in September 2017 ( see story here) reversed its earlier July 2017 order which was to have required that the bypassable adder to electricity SOS be eliminated effective June 1, 2018. Instead, the PSC maintained the bypassable adder, part of the SOS admin. charge, and said that the issue will be reviewed as part of the next biennial SOS review

Accordingly, the bypassable adder is to be among the preeminent issues to be considered in the new SOS review, along with the typical issues such as those addressed in the last review noted above.