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Pa. PUC Denies Utility's Proposal For Automatic CAP Enrollment, Citing Impact To Shopping Customers, Among Other Concerns
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The Pennsylvania PUC denied a proposal from Peoples Natural Gas Company LLC to automatically enroll customers into Peoples' Customer Assistance Program (CAP) if the customer has an account balance exceeding $300 and Peoples received a Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) grant for the customer within the past two years.
The PUC has allowed auto-enrollment onto CAP at several other utilities, but said that Peoples' proposal is incomplete, and has the potential to auto-enroll or auto-recertify customers onto CAP based on possibly out-of-date or unverified income or household information
In particular, the PUC cited the impact on shopping customers from CAP auto-enrollment
CAP customers may not shop for a competitive retail supplier at Peoples
The PUC said, "[W]e find Peoples’ CAP auto-enrollment proposal inadequate as it fails to propose a process to address situations where eligible customers may have an existing contract with a natural gas supplier."
The PUC noted that, "The Peoples proposal does not explain how its CAP auto-enrollment process would operate for customers who have an existing contract with a natural gas supplier."
"Auto-enrolling these customers into CAP may require canceling their supplier contracts without their consent in order to place their public utility account back to default service, which could make them responsible for paying any early cancellation fee imposed by their natural gas supplier," the PUC said
The PUC noted that at UGI Electric, where the PUC approved auto-enrollment onto CAP on a pilot basis, UGI excludes customers from the CAP auto-enrollment process if the customer has an existing contract with an electric supplier
Citing the practice at UGI Electric, the PUC said that, rather than auto-enrollment onto CAP, such relevant customers, "should instead be informed that they may be eligible to enroll in CAP if or when they go back to default service."
M-2018-3003177, P-2024-3052324, et al.
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April 24, 2025
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Copyright 2025 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com
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