While electricity bills have skyrocketed this year, the market price for the power we’ve been using has been far less than PG&E estimated – creating the potential for some refunds.
Each year, the utility predicts what the average price of power will be to establish the rate on your bill. While the actual price was considerably lower than PG&E had estimated this year, customers still pay the higher rate on their bills.
As of August, PG&E collected more than $830 million from customers over and beyond the cost of the power it provided, according to monthly filings reviewed by the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit. The amount is unusually high, based on an NBC Bay Area review of the last five years of PG&E regulatory filings.
"This is not an insignificant amount of money we're talking about," said Steven Weissman, a former regulatory judge with the CPUC who teaches at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. "The last thing you want to do is have the utility holding onto money that's not theirs."
But it turns out state regulations allow PG&E to do just that – at least temporarily. Because while PG&E is charging you more than what the power costs, it’s also selling power on the open market for less than it predicted.
But the regulations allow some of the extra money to offset PG&E’s $1.5 billion shortfall due to its selling power at lower-than-expected rates over the last two years. A final accounting won’t be done until the end of this year.
In a statement, PG&E stressed that it does not profit on any money it holds as a reserve to account for routine fluctuations in the market. It will pay back, with interest, any funds that are left over after the accounting, it says.
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"We know many of our customers are frustrated with higher costs of living, including energy bills," the utility said. "We are committed to stabilizing our customers' energy bills and are taking actions to limit average annual increases of combined electric and gas bills without sacrificing safety."
But ratepayer advocates say suffering customers need as much relief as they can get, as soon as possible.
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"PG&E s rates now are simply unaffordable," said Matt Freedman, with the Utility Reform Network (TURN). He noted that currently, one out of three low-income families is struggling to pay power bills.
"If that amount of money were returned to customers now, it would result in an 8% rate decrease for customers that are served by PG&E," he said.
If it turns out there is money left over after accounting for PG&E’s market losses, customers could expect some relief early next year.
