PORTLAND, Maine — Staff of the Maine Public Utilities Commission want regulators to cut by more than half a 2017 bill hike proposed by Emera Maine, issuing a report critical of the company’s error-ridden implementation of its new billing system.
In the report issued Monday, PUC staff suggested regulators let Emera Maine raise its rates for distributing electricity by 3.7 percent, or $3 million. The company seeks to raise its distribution rates by about 10 percent, partly to recoup costs associated with the billing system.
For the average customer, using about 550 kilowatt-hours a month, the recommendation would raise the average customer’s bill by about $1.18 per month, compared with the company’s proposal to raise monthly bills by more than $2.40.
PUC staff recommended the reduction to Emera Maine’s rate request after a monthslong audit, which concluded the company’s mismanagement contributed to it going over budget to get the new customer service system up and running.
The report also suggests a reduction in the company’s rate of return on its distribution facilities, as a penalty for ” imprudence” in implementing the multimillion-dollar customer information system.
The report recommends that Emera’s request to recoup its costs from the $30.8 million project be reduced by about $2.4 million. That’s in line with the auditor’s recommendation that Emera should cover at least $2 million of the cost overrun, which totaled $13.5 million.
The audit revealed that customer service response times and billing errors spiked during the launch of the new customer information system, which has not been fully implemented across Emera Maine’s service territories.
The audit also found that Emera Maine has “limited capacity to handle calls during large outages and weather events,” showing the percentage of customers who hung up after trying to call for customer service help spiked in 2014, to about one in five callers. The number improved in 2016 but remained at about 13 percent for most of the year.
The auditing firm, Liberty Consulting Group, told regulators that an acceptable call abandonment rate is between 5 and 10 percent.
The new report also considered whether Emera Maine should recover costs for the construction of a new Bar Harbor substation. PUC staff suggested that the company could have spent less on the substation, which became the subject of legal challenges by neighbors opposed to the initial proposal.
The company ultimately moved the project from a site on Woodbury Road to a Prospect Road site, which cost about $3.4 million more.
“In this case, it appears Emera Maine put aside the interests of the vast majority of its customers in efforts to satisfy the concerns of a small group of its customers in Bar Harbor,” the staff report states.
The staff recommended that the utility only be able to recover costs related to the initial proposal for a new Bar Harbor substation, at about $5 million.
The three-member commission will decide on the rate reduction recommendation at a later meeting, after Emera and other parties are given an opportunity to respond. The matter has not been scheduled.