Lawmakers want utilities to tell customers about surging power usage

An Assembly panel approved legislation that would require electric and gas utilities to notify their customers about surging usage midway through billing cycles Monday, months after severe heat swelled residents’ summer electric bills.

The bill, approved 7-1 with a single no vote from Assemblyman Christian Barranco (R-Morris), would require utilities to send notices to customers on the 10th and 20th days of each billing cycle if their power usage is greater than it was at that point in the prior billing cycle or the same month last year.

Though the bill faced little opposition before the committee, a representative for the state’s utilities urged amendments to ensure the legislation wouldn’t derail some utilities’ existing efforts to notify customers about high usage.

“When there’s a bill like this that’s circulating, we’re not sure — should we try to adapt to the provisions in this bill that haven’t yet been finalized and codified?” said Joseph Gurrentz, director of external affairs for the New Jersey Utilities Association. “When there’s changing goalposts, internally that leads to some conflict and extra cost and confusion.”

The committee amended the bill to require notifications when usage in a month exceeds usage in the same month in the prior year, instead of only the most recent billing cycle.

Utilities had sought such an amendment over concerns that month-over-month notifications would reflect changes in seasonal demand rather than increases in power usage.

New Jersey Rate Counsel Brian Lipman urged the committee to keep the notification program’s costs low by requiring residents to opt into it, rather than opt out, and limiting the notifications to electronic mediums to avoid incurring postage costs.

He also warned the program may require the installation of newer smart meters in some residences, including ones where smart meters that are not compatible with the envisioned program have already been installed.

“If entirely new smart meters were required by this bill, that would mean that ratepayers could be required to continue to pay for their current smart meter (even if it had to be removed) and then pay for an additional upgraded smart meter,” Lipman said in a letter to the committee. “This would be a serious financial burden.”

The Senate in October approved a different version of the bill. Because that bill differs from the one advanced Monday, lawmakers in the upper chamber must amend and approve it again before it reaches the governor’s desk.