A lot of discussion at the open meeting last week at the Commission. Most of it is pretty mundane stuff, but there were a couple of notable items.
First were the disconnect rules. You can view the quick video summary HERE.
There was also some heated discussion about the standardization of the CC&N extension process. The CC&N is the “Certificate of Convenience and Necessity”. That’s a bit phrase that basically means the utilities service territory. A utility is not prohibited from serving outside of their territory, but without a CC&N, there is nothing keeping other utilities from serving in the same area. The issue at play today is the fact that there is some ambiguity and somewhat arbitrary requirements that have been used with regards to the extension of the CC&N for various companies, and understandably, some utilities are upset about that. While nothing was resolved in this meeting, there seems to be some agreement that maybe some workshops need to be held to discuss the path forward to make this a more standardized process.
Additionally during this meeting we had:
- Some updates regarding progress from some utilities
- A ruling to allow an exemption to the master metering rules to allow solar on apartments/condos as well as mobile home parks
- Some orders of restitution from scammer and other fraudulent activities
- Authorizations for utilities to take out a loan to do some upgrades and changes (one of them to support a large, new semiconductor manufacturing plant).
- A few small rate cases
- The Chairwoman will open a new docket to discuss making the rate case process simpler for small utilities
This week will be a continuation of the items that were not addressed last week. This includes the Code of Ethics discussions, more discussion on hiring a third party consultant for the IRP process as well as the staff meeting.
Have a great week everyone, and God bless!
Nick