PUC Denies Stay of Proceeding Reviewing Time of Use Rates For Default Service

The presiding officers of a Maine PUC proceeding reviewing whether to adopt, on an opt-in or opt-out basis, time of use rates for electricity standard offer service have declined to stay the proceeding

As first reported by EnergyChoiceMatters.com, the stay had been proposed by the Office of the Public Advocate (OPA), and was supported by Versant Power and several green groups, and was unopposed by Central Maine Power

OPA had sought the stay in order to reduce the utilities' expense in developing costs/benefit analyses for a disparate number of TOU policy straw proposals, to the extent consensus could be achieved during the stay

The presiding officers, however, said that a stay is not typically granted, "until there appears a likelihood that agreement will be reached."

"That is not yet the case here," the presiding officers said

"[T]he Presiding Officers will continue with the iterative process of providing the utilities the opportunity to question and understand the various straw proposals sufficiently to allow them to prepare meaningful cost estimates. This effort involves mostly the time and effort of the utilities and Commission staff as well as some time expended by the OPA and Synapse Energy Economics. Since the majority of expenses the Motion seeks to avoid will occur once the utilities actually begin to develop their cost estimates, allowing for the completion of this iterative process should not materially interfere with the ability of the OPA and the parties to proceed with discussions in the next several weeks. Therefore, the Motion [to stay] is denied, but the parties are strongly encouraged to hold settlement discussions while this iterative process continues," the presiding officers said

Docket 2025-00176