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PUC Approves Design For New Purchase Of Receivables Program At State's Largest Utility
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The New Hampshire PUC has approved the design of a purchase of receivables program at Public Service of New
Hampshire (PSNH or Eversource) which generally follows the precedent that the PUC recently established in adopting POR program designs at Granite State Electric and Unitil
PSNH is New Hampshire's largest electricity utility serving approximately 530,000 customers
The PUC on August 22 approved design parameters for POR, but final adoption and implementation of the POR program is reserved to a second phase of the proceeding which will address conforming changes to PNSH's tariffs and supplier agreements
The PSNH POR program is to be open to retail electric suppliers in addition to municipal aggregations
Under the PUC's order, PSNH is to purchase retail supplier receivables billed through utility consolidated billing. Participation in POR will be mandatory for supply charges billed under UCB
A discount rate will apply to the purchased receivables
The PSNH POR discount rate will reflect uncollectibles, administrative costs, PSNH's incremental capital expense, and a reconciliation component
A unique discount rate will be developed for the residential group, and a separate unique discount rate will be developed for the non-residential group
Similar to recent PUC orders concerning POR programs at GSE and Unitil, the PUC rejected a hearing examiner's finding that the PSNH POR discount rate methodology, as described and adopted above, did not comply with statute, because, among other things, the methodology only assigned incremental costs to the POR discount, rather than a "pro rata" of all PSNH collection and collection-related administrative costs
The PUC once again affirmed that statute does not require the POR discount to account for working capital
unless working capital is required to implement and operate the POR program (as noted, PSNH's discount does include an incremental capital expense if needed) and does not require that the
discount account for collection efforts costs that are not caused by operation of POR
As it did at the state's other two electric utilities, the PUC did reject a date of May 1 as the annual update date for the POR discount rates. As before, the PUC said that a May 1 date does not provide enough time for a review of annual discount rate filings which will be made on March 1. The annual POR discount update shall instead take effect August 1, unless otherwise ordered by the PUC
The start date for POR at PSNH will be determined by the second phase of the proceeding noted above
Docket DE 23-004
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August 22, 2024
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Copyright 2024 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com
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