CUB Wins Favorable Ruling in Pacific Power Annual Power Cost Case
Posted on December 14, 2017 by Mike Goetz
Tags, Energy
Year in and year out, CUB comes to the table to argue against unjust and unreasonable rate increases for Pacific Power’s residential customers. In recent years it has been a bit of an uphill battle, and CUB and other stakeholders’ proposed rate decreases have been denied by the Oregon Public Utility Commission much more frequently than they have been accepted. If you recall, about a year ago we proclaimed the process to be “fundamentally broken”.
However, we are singing a different tune at CUB this year, as the Commission recently came down with a favorable ruling on CUB’s arguments. A couple of months ago on the CUB Blog, we outlined CUB’s strategy in this year’s case. Essentially, CUB argued that Pacific Power was inaccurately forecasting the number of contracts it entered into with qualifying renewable facilities (QF) under a federal law called PURPA that requires utilities like Pacific Power to purchase a given amount of energy from small-scale renewable developers. Not only was Pacific Power inaccurately forecasting this information, costing ratepayers millions—it knew it was.
After an evidentiary hearing and briefing on the issues, the Commission sided with CUB’s argument. It is refreshing to see the Commission agree that there is a need to revisit the process for determining how Pacific Power should forecast the costs it is paying for certain renewable energy generation. Pacific Power brings in an officer to attest that these contracts will come online during the next year, but they have not. To quote the Commission “[w]e agree with CUB that the company will likely be more careful in the future.” The Commission also adopted CUB’s proposed delay rate to more accurately determine which renewable contracts will come online, and which will not. CUB’s goal is to make sure that residential customers are only charged for energy that actually serves them.
Like CUB has in the past, the Commission now clearly has its eyes more carefully trained on the process that Pacific Power uses to forecast costs to be put into customer rates. CUB is optimistic for the process going forward, and applauds the Commission on its close scrutiny of Pacific Power’s proposed rate increase.
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12/14/17 | 0 Comments | CUB Wins Favorable Ruling in Pacific Power Annual Power Cost Case