Maine PUC weighs possibility of Emera audit
On Tuesday, the Maine Public Utilities Commission announced that it was considering performing an audit of Emera Maine following the utility company’s request for a hike in rates it charges customers for costs related to the power lines it uses to connect customers to the grid. Another reason cited by the PUC is billing problems that have been reported by customers.
As reported by the Bangor Daily News at the end of March, in a regulatory filing Emera Maine President Alan Richardson said the request to hike rates was made to recover the costs of upgrades and to counteract lower revenue from energy use.
The costly new upgrades contributing to the hike include the energy company's Hampden operations facility, an Acadia substation and a customer information system, according to the BDN.
The proposed rate increase of $2.40 per month is based on households using 500 kilowatt hours of electricity a month. It would be shared by Emera's 159,000 customers across two service territories.
The PUC audit will also take a closer look at how the company managed its new customer information system, its credit collections operations and its transmission and distribution center.
Originally, Emera had projected a price tag of $17.3 million for the customer information center in 2014 — but the final cost was $30.1 million — approximately 50% higher than projected.
The Maine Public Utilities Commission said that the introduction of the new system caused hiccups in billing.
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