Don't keep the change: N.B. Power preparing to refund all customers, including some owed pennies
Final rate decision from EUB will require small but universal rebates to hundreds of thousands
New calculations by N.B. Power show rebates are likely owed to hundreds of thousands of its customers for amounts they were charged for electricity between April and November.
But making big holiday plans for the approaching windfall is not recommended.
Most refund amounts, particularly to residential customers, will barely finance the price of a cup of coffee.
"The rebate is not going to be material," Alain Chiasson, New Brunswick's public intervener, said in an interview.
"It's going to be a very small amount of refund."
Earlier this month, the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board issued a decision in N.B. Power's nearly year-long application to raise its rates an average of 19.4 per cent over two years.
That application called for an average 9.25 per cent rate increase this year and a matching 9.25 per cent increase to take effect next April. Rate increases for some customers, including residential, wholesale and industrial, were to be higher, at 9.8 per cent in each of the two years.
However, in its decision on that application, delivered publicly on Nov. 8, the utilities board disallowed some budget items and ordered the utility to recalculate increases to customers after removing those amounts.
In new public filings with the board, N.B. Power said its new calculations show those changes will lower the two 9.8 per cent increases for residential customers to a pair of 9.7 per cent increases, retroactive to April 1.
That triggers the need for refunds, since N.B. Power has been charging residential customers 9.8 per cent more since last April and will have to pay back the difference.
Under the terms of the April increase allowed by the utilities board, it explicitly told N.B. Power the company would have to "make billing adjustments for customers in the event that final rates approved by the Board are different than the rates approved" in the April interim order."
Darren Murphy, N.B. Power's chief financial officer, testified the utility would be able to return every dime required.
"We will ensure that customer bills are adjusted for whatever final decisions are rendered," Murphy said.
"Customers will not be harmed."
Chiasson said that means refunds have to be paid, no matter how small they may be.
"Yes, they have to still make good on that," he said.
"I don't know how N.B. Power will do that exactly but they have mechanisms to refund customers, and I expect that they will do so."
An average residential bill, prior to the latest increase, was $200 per month, not including the HST. The difference between a 9.8 per cent and 9.7 per cent rate increase on a bill of that size is about 20 cents per month.
That would require an average refund to residential customers of about $1.60, plus HST, if the extra amount has been charged over eight months.
Commercial, industrial and municipal customers also qualify for the same 0.1 per cent refund, but Dominique Couture, N.B. Power spokesperson, said in an email the utility cannot calculate rebate amounts just yet because the EUB has not officially approved the utility's recalculation of rates.
"Once approved by the [New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board], we will communicate any changes to customers," wrote Couture.
Saint John Energy would not say if it is expecting a refund from N.B. Power on electricity it has purchased since April and if it will be passing those amounts through to its customers.
"We will await the Board's order before determining next steps," the company said in an email.
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