SCE Trying To Double-Charge Customers $700 Million For Fire Safety Work, CPUC Audit Says
Written by 991KBU on December 16, 2021
Southern California Edison ratepayers could be getting charged twice for 700.4 million dollars worth of wildfire safety work
That’s the conclusion of a team of auditors that has gone through Southern California Edison’s financial books.
The company .. as you might expect … disagrees with the audit.
The auditor team was hired by the California Public Utilities Commission.
They say the company has transferred 700 million dollars worth of maintenance projects out of accounts already paid for by ratepayers …. and placed those expenditures in a reimbursement account that is eligible for yet another rate hike.
How do they plan to do this?
According to the audit … Edison took off 51 million dollars in operating expenses… plus almost 650 million dollars in construction projects … that were covered by ratepayers between 2018 and 2020.
The work was done … all right … but the $700 million or so costs were stuck in a so-called incremental account.
That’s a financial column that the state regulators use to track money that Edison spent on mandatory fire mitigation work …
That work was ordered by the state … but Edison is eligible to raise rates to cover the work.
Edison gets to come back and ask for reimbursement in its next rate case … in effect … possibly being reimbursed twice.
The auditors say that Southern California Edison needs to prove that the work was actually done.… before the current rate hike request is considered.
And that ratepayers have not already paid for it.
Edison has 5 million customer accounts … so this 700 million dollars potential overcharge equals roughly 140 dollars per household
In the audit… Edison officials were given an opportunity to respond in writing.
They say the auditors are not looking at the issue … the same way that CPUC state regulators do.
They say customers have already been refunded the majority of the general rate funded projects that weren’t undertaken.
Edison also says the audit has what they call “material flaws from a factual perspective.”
But the power company agrees that improvements need to be made in the way it reports its general rate case rates case and wild fire mitigation expenses in separate categories.
It’s up to the California public utilities commission to decide what to do about the alleged 700 million dollars in double-billing by the power company.
The audit was released yesterday and we immediately asked Edison for a response.
None yet.
===
