Category: Utilities

PSC Sets Local Public Hearing Schedule in Missouri-American Water Company Rate Cases

The Missouri Public Service Commission will hold virtual local public hearings in January to receive customer comment in water and sewer rate cases filed by the Missouri-American Water Company (MAWC). Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, these local public hearings will be conducted virtually by WebEx and telephone conference. They will be streamed live on the Commission’s website (psc.mo.gov).

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Ameren settles with ratepayer advocates and announces energy efficiency plan

Consumer advocates rejected the initial plan citing overspending and inadequate benefits

Ameren, Missouri’s largest utility company, has reached an agreement with consumer advocates and environmental groups to launch an energy efficiency plan. The utility proposed a $550 million conservation program over six year, but consumer advocates fought to scale back the program duration and overall spending.

The modified plan calls for $227 million in spending and creates a “check in” at 3 years to ensure that the program is delivering results.

Consumer advocates hail the compromise. Cara Spencer of the Consumers Council of Missouri said “this is a good compromise and provides a net value to both consumers and the environment without placing an undue burden on ratepayers.”

The plan is intended to benefit a wide spectrum of Ameren consumers and includes $20 million in benefits low-income households. The agreement also sets up data sharing that will allow low-income consumer experts to ensure the program is working equitably.

Spencer adds, “This is not only good for the environment, but with this compromise we have protected rate payers and specifically low-income households.”

The Missouri Public Service Commission is expected to make a decision in the next couple of weeks.

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Will a governor’s scandal upend ratemaking reform?

Each of the past two years, a filibuster by a few state senators in the final days of the legislative session stymied a utility-backed ratemaking bill in Missouri.
This year, the utility bill survived a 22-hour Senate filibuster in February (Energywire, Feb. 12). Now the question is what happens in the final days of a legislative session that has been consumed by the scandal enveloping Gov. Eric Greitens (R).
Greitens goes on trial Monday in St. Louis on felony invasion of privacy charges related to an extramarital affair he had in 2015. The governor faces separate charges of illegally obtaining a donor list from the veterans charity he founded and using it to raise money for his campaign in 2016.
Back at the Capitol, the Legislature will convene 30 minutes after the regular session wraps up May 18 to consider impeachment proceedings against the first-term Republican after 138 House members and 29 senators signed a petition calling for the special session. The unprecedented situation throws into question what the General Assembly will get done in its final week, which is a frenzied time even under usual circumstances.
“Missouri legislators are worried that many of their priorities, such as utility regulation, could fall victim to the usual rush of last-minute business and the unusual rush of impeachment business,” said David Robertson, a political science professor at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.
St. Louis-based Ameren Missouri, the state’s largest utility with 1.2 million customers, led the lobbying push for ratemaking reforms. The utility has for years complained that “regulatory lag” in Missouri prevented the company and others from earning maximum authorized profits.
Utility officials said yesterday that they’re hopeful the bill will pass the House as written during the next eight days and advance to the governor’s desk. But they provided little insight as to when that might happen.
“It is on the House calendar, and it will go to the floor when the House leadership chooses to have it go to the floor,” Ameren Corp. CEO Warner Baxter said during the company’s first-quarter earnings call.
It’s not the first time the Legislature has been close to passing the utility bill as the deadline approached. Executives noted that it has been the Senate that blocked the legislation in previous years. And if the House passes S.B. 564 without amendments, it will go to the governor’s desk.
“We have never been this close, never been this far through the process,” Ameren Missouri CEO Michael Moehn said.
The bill is supported by all the state’s electric suppliers and local and state chambers of commerce and labor unions. Opposition has come from consumer groups, including industrial energy users.
The legislation’s key provision would authorize a ratemaking change to enable utilities to begin book depreciation and earn a return on investments as soon as they’re placed in service instead of waiting months or years until the conclusion of a rate case.
Ameren said the change won’t just benefit shareholders. Improving profitability will encourage the utility to make an incremental $1 billion in grid investments over the next five years that will improve reliability and create jobs. The bill would freeze utility base rates until 2020 and cap annual increases at 2.85 percent through 2023.
S.B. 564 would also enable utilities to offer lower rates to new large energy users as an economic development incentive and authorize utility regulators to pass through savings retroactive to Jan. 1 tied to the reduction in the corporate income tax rate.
Ameren has said the tax savings would amount to $133 million, or almost 5 percent based on current rates.
Opponents of the bill, from big industrial power customers to residential ratepayer advocates, said there’s nothing in the bill to benefit consumers. They say Missouri’s grid is reliable, utilities are financially healthy and rates are low. In their eyes, the bill is aimed at boosting profits.
Critics also point out that utilities in other states have voluntarily agreed to pass through tax savings to customers. But in Missouri, the tax savings are being used as political leverage.
John Coffman, an attorney for the Consumers Council of Missouri, said amendments have been proposed that would clarify issues related to the bill’s tax refund provisions. One involves whether the Public Service Commission could approve refunds outside a rate case. The other issue involves whether rate caps in the legislation are based on the utility rates before the tax cut, or after.
“Those are two things people are actively trying to fix in the legislation,” he said.
Coffman is among those who doesn’t think Greitens’ legal problems will have any effect on whether the bill passes. If anything, he said, the scandal has taken attention away from what else is happening at the Capitol.
If the bill passes the House, it would need to be sent to the governor’s desk by May 30.

 

https://www.eenews.net/energywire/stories/1060073547/

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Utilities and Opponents are Playing Hardball with Rate Reform

by the Editorial Board for the St. Louis Post-Dispatcth

Ameren Missouri’s cherished rate-reform bill, which has sat dormant in the Missouri House since being passed by the state Senate in mid-February, is meeting 11th-hour challenges — and a threat to force full disclosure of all the money spent to pass it. Missouri consumers’ best hope is for Senate Bill 564 to die before the legislative session ends May 18.

Groups representing both residential and large industrial power users have raised significant doubts about Ameren’s claims that it would benefit consumers by capping rate increases at 2.85 percent per year for residential customers and 2 percent for industrial users.

Opponents argue that changes to the way that the state’s three investor-owned utilities calculate expenses would lead to an effective rate increase of 8 percent to 10 percent — or as much as 20 percent in the view of the Consumers Council of Missouri.

In the Senate, despite political dangers from rate hikes in an election year, a few labor Democrats joined the GOP majority to pass the bill 25-6 in February.

The bill stalled while the House considered its own measure. But as the state’s attention turned to the drama of Gov. Eric Greitens’ upcoming trial in St. Louis, legislative leaders quietly pushed this week for the House to pass the Senate bill without amendments. That would enable it to go back to the Senate for final passage without the threat of a filibuster in the session’s last week.

House leaders indicated Wednesday they were willing to break their promise to allow full and open debate, and to push for a quick vote.

In response, Sen. Doug Libla, R-Poplar Bluff, drafted a letter to Missouri Public Service Commissioner Daniel Hall to immediately require the three investor-owned utilities to disclose all of their political donations and lobbyist spending since 2014. In February, Sen. Rob Schaaf, R-St. Joseph, calculated that the utilities had contributed $900,000 to legislators.

Greitens received about $180,000 from Ameren alone, not counting any undisclosed donations to his “dark money” committee. The PSC can order utilities to disclose dark money contributions.

Even with rate caps in place, SB 564 would allow utilities to potentially make tens of millions more each year from a tool called “Plant In-Service Accounting.” Almost every dollar spent on capital investments could be quickly charged to customers without having to gain PSC approval. Ameren argues that it needs the change to modernize its electric grid, but this accounting tool also would allow it to quickly charge consumers for maintaining the old grid.

Ameren also is holding hostage some $133 million a year in tax savings from the federal tax cut bill that should be returned to customers in the form of a 4.9 percent rate cut. Ameren has done so in Illinois but says Missouri regulators tie its hands. This is not a posture that inspires trust.

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Gas Rates Go Down and Low Income Residents Get Bill Assistance.

For Immediate Release
Contact: Cara Spencer, executive director of Consumers Council of Missouri
314-556-7379
 
Gas Rates Go Down and Low Income Residents Get Bill Assistance.
Jefferson City — The Missouri Public Service Commission just approved Spire’s new natural gas rates – effective April 19 – and your monthly gas bill will actually decrease, with the savings varying cross the state.
Last year, Laclede Gas Company (Spire’s Eastern Missouri territory) requested an increase of $3.31 per month for the average residential customer. But after a full audit and litigation of consumer concerns, these customers will actually see a rate reduction of approximately 5%, or an average of $2.00 per month less for an average residential consumer.
MGE (Spire’s Western Missouri territory) requested a $5.09 per month increase for the average residential customer but these customers will see a rate reduction of approximately 1%, or $0.40 less each month for an average consumer.
The measure is not a slam dunk for consumers – the order granted a very high profit level (9.8%) and approved a Weather Adjustment, which exposes consumers to future rate increases whenever we experience a warmer than normal winter, a rate mechanism that consumers will continue to fight. The Infrastructure System Replacement Surcharge (ISRS) will also continue to grow in the future.
Overall, however, gas bills will go down this month, giving consumers a reason to cheer.
 
But this rate reduction almost didn’t happen. Two years ago, Consumers Council of Missouri successfully fought state legislation (HB 1471 – 2016 / SB 849 – 2016) that would have prevented this rate case from happening. At that time, the gas utility claimed that the legislation would spare ratepayers a costly rate increase.
 “Consumer advocates have been saying for years that gas delivery prices should be reduced, “ says John Coffman of Consumers Council “ and in fact, this is the third full rate case audit in a row that has resulted in some rate reduction for the Laclede Gas area.”
 
Another positive that came out of this most recent rate case was the outline of an improved low-income program, that should end up providing over a million dollars of relief, with rewards for participants who keep current on their bill payments. A settlement provides 120 days for the utility, consumer groups, and community action agencies to work out the details of this new program.

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Missouri bills deregulating utility rates make headway. Consumer protections? Not so much

Bills that would deregulate how MO utility companies set rates are making progress through legislative committees in both the Missouri House and Senate. Another series of bills aimed at increasing consumer protections, however, have all mostly stalled.

https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/state_news/missouri-bills-deregulating-utility-rates-make-headway-consumer-protections-not/article_d6de1d28-2c71-11e8-bf32-2f4f0314e123.html

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SB564: The FACTS

The Consumers Council of Missouri would like to offer the residential consumer perspective of Senate Bill 564.

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Tax cuts spur KCP&L rate update case.

While KCP&L is proposing a rate increase, CCM is calling for a decrease: calling on state officials to evaluate how the tax cuts might be rolled into utility costs

http://www.newspressnow.com/news/business/tax-cuts-spur-kcp-l-rate-update-case/article_bebbab39-1e1e-5c80-b028-a5fe5eedcb17.html

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Water Rates Skyrocketing?

Massive Water Rate Increase: 45% proposal in St. Louis County. Consumers Council has the following concerns:

The request is based on an estimate of future expenses rather than audited costs, which means that consumers could be overcharged. Rates should be based on actual costs, not guesses.

It would add a charge that would raise rates when usage declines, a “save more, pay more” model. This is would disincentivize conservation and essentially shift the risk burden from the investor-owned utility company to the individual consumer.

Most significantly, the proposal would result in an increase in the St. Louis metro area of a whopping 45 percent!

Join us in voicing concerns.

http://www.stlamerican.com/news/columnists/guest_columnists/massive-water-rate-increase-proposed-in-st-louis-county/article_10b30b56-053c-11e8-af0f-bbf5202328c8.html

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