HARRISBURG – The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) today approved a settlement agreement that ends an informal investigation into a system billing error that resulted in incorrect bills for 353 Pike County Light and Power Co. (PCL&P) customers.

The Commission voted unanimously to direct $35,300 ($100 per customer affected by the billing error) to The Neighbor Fund, which helps low-income PCL&P customers with their bills. As part of the settlement, the company also has agreed to implement additional billing system reviews in an effort to ensure this is a one-time occurrence.  The company has agreed not to recover any of the approximately $35,000 under-billed service from ratepayers. 

As the result of a customer inquiry concerning monthly billing demand, the company began reviewing its ratchet billing calculations for all non-residential customers and found a system billing error in the application of its tariff.  The company notified the PUC of the problem in June 2006.

On July 19, 2006, the Commission’s independent prosecutory staff initiated an informal investigation to determine the cause, effect and resolution of an error in the ratchet billing rate applied to non-residential customers of PCL&P. According to the settlement, the results of the investigation included that:

• The company over-billed 273 non-residential customers 2.6 times per year by a total of $67,967, and under-billed 80 customers by a total of $34,834 between June 1998 and May 2006; 
• Upon discovery of the programming error, the company identified all affected customers, recalculated all over-billings and credited each customer’s bill in the amount of the over-billing plus interest. 

In other action related to PCLP, the PUC voted to investigate the company’s request to increase its distribution rates by about $1.2 million.

The Commission voted 5-0 to investigate the request, which represents about a 9.6 percent increase in rates. Under the company’s proposal, the monthly bill for an average residential customer using 660 kWh would increase about $15.90 from $109.47 to $125.37 (14.5 percent).

The company also is proposing an alternative three-year rate phase-in plan for its electric operations, which, if adopted, would establish rates for the three-year period ending March 2012. Under the company’s three-year levelized rate proposal, the levelized annual distribution rate increase would amount to $614,400 per year. While the percentage and dollar impacts for the company’s three-year proposal currently are not available, the monthly bill impacts for customers would certainly be much lower under a three-year rate plan than a one-year rate plan.

The increase would affect about 4,600 residential, commercial and industrial customers in Pike County.