WILKES-BARRE — Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Chairman Stephen M. DeFrank said on Thursday that, after examining the settlement with PPL Electric Utilities and acknowledging the seriousness of the events that occurred, the PUC decided to revise the terms.
“We believe such changes are necessary to adequately address the harm to the public, prevent these events from happening again, and provide affected customers with proper solutions,” DeFrank stated.
On Thursday, the PUC approved a motion to strengthen a proposed settlement regarding widespread customer billing problems that affected PPL customers for most of 2023.
The Commission voted 3-2 to endorse a joint motion from PUC Chairman DeFrank and Commissioner Kathryn L. Zerfuss, which adjusts the proposed joint settlement between the PUC’s independent Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement (I&E) and PPL.
Dana Burns, Director of Communications for PPL Electric Utilities, provided a statement from the utility:
“We thank the Commission for considering this matter. We will review the order once it becomes available.
“In the meantime, we will continue to build upon the significant work we already have done to support our customers, continuously improve our service and prevent a billing issue like this from occurring again.”
Modifications to the proposed settlement
The PUC stated that the changes come after carefully analyzing over 160 comments filed by consumers, advocates, and other concerned parties, providing perspectives on the impact of PPL’s billing problems and offering input on the proposed settlement, including the requirement for PPL to make a $1 million contribution to the company’s customer hardship fund instead of the civil penalty in the original settlement proposal.
The PUC mentioned that directing PPL to donate $1 million to its Hardship Fund will assist PPL customers with income at or below 250% of the federal poverty level in paying their electric bills, maintaining their electric service, and obtaining referrals to other assistance programs.
“From the start, the PUC demonstrated its commitment to affected customers by initiating an investigation,” Commissioner Zerfuss emphasized. “Our current actions further demonstrate our commitment by adjusting this proposed settlement to provide customers with additional solutions, protections, and assurances, as well as nearly doubling PPL’s hardship fund with a $1 million donation to help qualifying families and seniors struggling with their energy needs.”
Aside from the hardship fund contribution, the motion from Chairman DeFrank and Commissioner Zerfuss also adapts the joint settlement to require more detailed reporting on the cause and impact of PPL’s billing problems, and other measures to improve transparency and consumer protection, including:
• A more thorough analysis of PPL’s billing problems, including a root cause analysis and report on that analysis, which will be provided to the Commission, Pennsylvania’s consumer and small business advocates, and the Public Utility Law Project.
• PPL will give extra money back and help to any customer found in the root cause analysis as not being properly dealt with.
• PPL will be more open about how customer balances and disconnections are handled, including whether refunds and missed bills were enough to help the customers; whether the six-month disconnection pause during the billing issues was long enough to help all affected customers; and the impact on some customers' eligibility for utility assistance programs such as LIHEAP.
• PPL will change the formula used to make estimated bills.
• Information about how PPL calculated the $1 million in refunds already given to customers.
• A specific schedule for putting into effect the corrective actions in the settlement.
“We are pleased to give back money to the ratepayers,” said Commissioner Ralph V. Yanora in supporting today’s motion.
The settlement also includes a series of corrective actions in response to PPL’s billing issues, and PPL’s voluntarily agreement to absorb more than $16 million in additional costs related to rectifying their billing issues.
The settlement also makes it clear that none of the PPL costs related to rectifying the billing issues will be recovered from any ratepayers.
PPL billing issues investigation
According to the PUC:
• The settlement proposed by I&E and PPL follows an investigation launched by the PUC in early 2023, in response to PPL billing system malfunctions which impacted bills for nearly 800,000 customer accounts.
• Those system malfunctions resulted in unusually high or low estimated bills, missing monthly bills, and/or bills that did not include any supplier charges or only included partial charges.
• The billing issues were exacerbated by the lack of adequate customer service support resulting in consumers being unable to reach PPL Call Center representatives to discuss their billing concerns.
