FirstEnergy Pennsylvania Electric Company, a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp, has officially reached a settlement in its base rate review, subject to the approval of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PaPUC). According to certain reports, the $225 million settlement expands bill assistance for low-income residential customers, and at the same time, enables the company’s electric grid investments that support safe and reliable electric service for its Pennsylvania customers. More on the same would reveal how the development was conceived keeping in mind the interests of parties like Office of the Consumer Advocate, the Office of the Small Business Advocate, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission’s Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement, the Coalition for Affordable Utility Services and Energy Efficiency in Pennsylvania, the Met-Ed Industrial Users Group, Penelec Industrial Customer Alliance, and the West Penn Power Industrial Intervenors. Not just that, it also considered the interest of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 459, the Local Union 777 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO, the UWUA System Local 102, Walmart, Inc. and the Pennsylvania State University.
Talk about what this settlement is likely to ensure on a slightly deeper level, we begin from the promise of increasing vegetation management investments to enhance tree trimming and other related work around company power lines, something which should, in turn, scale up electric service reliability. Next up, it will support investments in the electric grid through the Long-Term Infrastructure Improvement Plan III (LTIIP III), thus improving upon the reliability of power lines and substations. Then comes the potential for identifying opportunities to selectively place distribution facilities underground, and therefore, achieve the same overarching goal of better electric service reliability. Moving on, the settlement in question will also allow FirstEnergy Pennsylvania to continue recovering expenses incurred when restoring electricity to customers following storms and severe weather.
“This settlement will amplify our efforts to connect our lower-income customers with a wide variety of bill assistance programs while also making meaningful upgrades to our electric system to enhance reliability for customers. We appreciate the broad set of stakeholders who participated in open and transparent settlement discussions that resulted in an agreement that balances all interests in our rates proceeding,” said John Hawkins, FirstEnergy’s President of Pennsylvania.
The whole settlement will also tread a long distance in the context of increasing annual funding for Hardship Fund grants by $2 million above current levels, and it will do so across a three-year period starting in 2025. Moving on, it will increase the maximum Hardship Fund grant to $600 for assisting eligible customers whose electric service has been or is at risk of termination. Hold on, we are not done yet, considering it will also try and implement a process for using income data from the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services to improve enrollment and retention in FirstEnergy’s income-eligible Pennsylvania Customer Assistance Program (PCAP). Rounding up highlights is its bid to hire an incremental 10% to field workforce above the prior year’s attrition for five years or until the next base rate review, whichever comes first.
Apart from that, we ought to mention that, if approved by the PaPUC, the settlement agreement would trigger multiple upticks for residential customers using 1,000 kilowatt-hours per month. These upticks include Met-Ed, who is likely to see an average increase of 1.9% or $3.49 for a new monthly bill of $191.19. Next up, there is Penelec, who is expecting an average increase of 4.1% or $8.33 for a new monthly bill of $209.29. Moving on to Penn Power, it will experience an average increase of 4.5% or $8.13 for a new monthly bill of $188.7. As for West Penn, this one is poised for an average increase of 6.2% or $9.70 for a new monthly bill of $166.07.
Founded in 1997, FirstEnergy’s rise up the ranks stems from the fact that its electric distribution companies form one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric systems, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and New York.
