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infestans t1_j496ukc wrote

Reply to comment by Mountain_Bill5743 in Need a sanity check on my gas bill by ancisfranderson

Yeah dude in the middle of nowhere in Warwick too.

I took a half day, and took the bus, cause I knew it was gonna cost me a lot more than 4 hours lost wages in the long run.

Though jokes on me, it still went through so I'm out the 4 hours and the price gouging.

They were super brazen about passing the costs of the sale 100% on to us to they didn't even pretend otherwise it was bullshit

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Mountain_Bill5743 t1_j498fy8 wrote

That's awesome that you went but insane that it was scheduled that way. Stay active. Lots more BS to attend at state and local meetings! Providence is lucky to have people like you willing to go the extra mile to attend such meetings.

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infestans t1_j4c576l wrote

They do it that way on purpose! Don't let them get away with it!!

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rakman t1_j49l4qg wrote

> They were super brazen about passing the costs of the sale 100% on to us to they didn’t even pretend otherwise it was bullshit

Can you please explain what you mean by this?

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infestans t1_j4c5szd wrote

In the hearing the AG (or the public utilities commission i can't remember which one) asked how they (PPL) were planning on financing the cost of the acquisition and they said very bluntly they planned on paying for it by recouping that cost from ratepayers.

No new sources of income or anything, just raise margin on customers and use that profit to pay off the purchase.

So even absent the increase in raw gas and electric costs we were going to get a 40% increase (IIRC) in their off-the-top add on charges just for the luxury of a name change basically

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rakman t1_j4c6ajc wrote

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense since rates are regulated. Also, “raise margins to pay off acquisition costs” is pretty standard business practice, you don’t buy a business if it’s not accretive to profits. I’m not an expert on public records but I assume this would have been captured in the hearing minutes?

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infestans t1_j4c8636 wrote

Yep it should all be in the minutes. But then why would we approve it? Our service has not improved, efficiencies have not improved, there was no benefit for the end user except a rate hike so two companies could trade the state like a pokemon card. We could have just said no! Literally no reason to approve it. We get a rate hike (which they also approved!) and nothing else!

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infestans t1_j4c8cho wrote

It's one thing if we had no say but the public utilities commission could literally have said no! That's part of the deal for running a statewide monopoly!

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rakman t1_j4xwpjg wrote

How does change of ownership increase regulated rates above what they would have been under the previous ownership? Is there a "new owner profit premium" in the calculation? If not, then what's your theory?

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infestans t1_j4y4r9x wrote

they requested an increase in their ROE, and got it. Its up over 10% now, maybe 11% IIRC. The cost of the actual utilities, gas and electricity, are pass-throughs, PPL does no generation. The only prices they control are via their ROE which they have to request from the PUC every 3-8 years. They're locked in for the next 3 years, but it would have been not unreasonable whatsoever to tell the company to swallow some profit margin to offset current high pass-through prices but the PUC is entirely made up of former NatGrid beancounters so why would they ever do that? They're paying off their own purchase via that 11% profit margin and you bet your ass in 2025 they'll be back asking for 12 or 13.

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man why weren't you at the hearing?

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