By Hasso Hering
Albany Democrat-Herald | Posted: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 12:00 am
Company wishes the decrease were larger
Mid-valley customers of Pacific Power will see a 4 percent drop in electric bills this fall because of a decision by the Bonneville Power Administration.
But Pacific thinks the reduction should have been greater and has complained to the BPA.
BPA announced from Portland on Tuesday that it was lowering its rates 1 percent starting Oct. 1 and - more significant for Pacific customers - restarting a program to share the benefits of low-cost federal hydropower with investor-owned utilities.
BPA's "residential exchange program" was stopped by a federal appeals court decision in May 2007, causing electric rates for Pacific customers to rise.
Now the federal agency has settled on a way to resume the program and comply with the court ruling.
Jan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for Pacific in Portland, said a credit of 4 percent will appear on customers' bills as soon as the accounting details can be worked out, which she expected to be in mid-November.
The credit will be available to residential and small-farm customers under the 1980 Northwest Power Act.
Pacific has about 39,000 residential customers in Linn County and 27,600 in Benton.
Customers of Consumers Power will not be affected. Mary Zimmerman, a spokeswoman for Consumers, said from Philomath that the publicly owned utility plans no rate increase or decrease during the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.
The residential exchange program is intended to let residential and farm customers of investor-owned utilities share in the benefits of lower-cost federal hydropower. Before the 1980 act, only publicly owned utilities got the federal power.
Pacific disagrees with the financial arrangement announced by BPA Administrator Steve Wright on Tuesday.
Pat Reiten, president of Pacific, objected to a requirement that previous overpayments to the private utilities be repaid over seven years instead of 20, as had been negotiated earlier.
"This radical compression of the repayment period would substantially reduce residential exchange benefits to every one of our residential and small-farm customers," Reiten wrote the BPA chief on Sept. 15.
"Our customers are already facing the prospect of price increase due to increased fuel and plant costs and will soon bear the burden of significant carbon costs as well. This policy decision will only aggravate the problem for the millions of customers we serve."