Central Maine Power said its internal audit of its smart meter and new billing system has shown no signs so far of artificially inflating electricity usage by customers, some of whom have complained their bills are hundreds of dollars higher than normal.
In a telephone conference call with reporters Friday morning, CMP CEO Doug Herling said the company has tested more than 1,600 of its meters since this January at the request of customers, which is almost four times more than the 444 tested in all of 2017. Of those tested this year, only one meter, which was not a smart meter, wasn’t working properly.
The billing system, suspected smart meter failures and an unexpectedly cold spell in December and January have been blamed for the high bills.
“We feel very confident that the smart meters are working properly,” he said. “We’ve not found anything in the billing system or the smart meter system that would artificially increase customer usage.” The company is still checking for issues, and he said if it finds any, it will credit any extra payment to the customer.
Additionally, on Jan. 1 the standard offer price, a fixed rate approved by state utilities’ regulators each year as a default electricity supply option, was increased. Herling said that while that price shows up on the CMP bill, it is not a CMP charge because CMP is a transmission and distribution company, not an energy supplier. However, customers saw 8 cents added to their bill because of the standard offer price increase.
To date, Herling said CMP has been able to speak with with many customers and explain the extra usage. It has talked to about two-thirds of the 1,580 customers who filed complaints with the PUC.
“We’ve heard of cases when customers say no one was at the premise,” Eric Stinneford, vice president, controller, treasurer and clerk at CMP, said. “In a number of cases we found they had appliances left on, which explained the usage.”
Herling said he welcomes an external audit by the Maine Public Utilities Commission, the regulatory body for utilities.
The PUC started a summary investigation about the complaints in late February.
On March 20, PUC Chairman Mark Vannoy and Commissioners R. Bruce Williamson and Randall Davis voted to undertake a formal technical investigation to look expressly at metering and billing issues that have arisen over the past several months.
“I approve [checking] customer billing from the meter, whether it’s a smart [digital] or analog meter, all the way through to the creation and delivery of a customer bill, which includes both financial and usage information,” Davis said at the time.
Herling said the company wants to get information to the public about the measures his company is taking to get to the root of the complaints. The call Friday is the first of what he said will continue to be “calls as long as they are needed.”
The reviews of the PUC complaints by CMP involve assigning a member of a special team to research the customer account and call the customer.
“It can take more than an hour to discuss a bill,” Beth Nowack Cowen, Customer Service Experience vice president at CMP, said.
“In some cases we’ve closed out the cases and in other cases we’ve come to an impasse and the customer has gone back to the PUC.”
CMP added 38 percent more staff to handle customer calls when it started its new billing system last November. It has 180 agents who answer calls and experts who call customers in the evening and on the weekends, she said.
Earlier this week the PUC said CMP will not be allowed to disconnect certain customers’ electricity supply while it conducts its independent investigation.
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