California’s major private-sector energy utilities have been unable to develop a policy on service shutoffs, which have been skyrocketing in recent months, so the state regulatory commission plans to mandate a new policy, according to comments Thursday by the state’s top regulator. Michael Peevey, president of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), indicated that he and his colleagues will outline a new approach in February.

Peevey said he had hoped a voluntary approach would work as encouraged by a state regulatory commission workshop earlier in January; however, volunteerism in this case didn’t take hold. “I’m sorry to say that we’re now going to do compulsion,” he said.

The CPUC will develop a standard with which each of the utilities will have to comply, and Peevey said he hoped to get the process under way at the CPUC’s next meeting in early February.

Triggered by reports from utility consumer organizations and a CPUC en banc hearing in mid-December, the state’s investor-owned utilities at that time agreed to stop any customer service shutoffs at least through the holidays (see Daily GPI, Jan. 11). A workshop followed, but nothing could be resolved and the CPUC’s independent consumer unit, the Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA), criticized the utilities for allegedly not doing enough to curb the rising numbers of customer shutoffs for nonpayment.

A DRA spokesperson earlier in January said the consumer unit believes disconnection moratoriums will be “counter-productive” without new policies to promote bill management by the utilities. “At this point, the utilities have shown little desire to remedy this situation on a voluntary basis,” the spokesperson said.

“It is regrettable that we couldn’t do more on a voluntary basis, but at least we tried,” Peevey said. “I thought we could get a policy quicker if we did this on a voluntary basis. Now we will set a policy and all utilities will have to adhere to it. We’re not letting this go by. As all of the members of this commission have said from time to time, we take our role in this regard very, very seriously.”

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