Letter: Is RI Energy taking advantage of its customers?

Posted 1/13/25

To the Editor:

If you receive a monthly billing statement from RI Energy you will want to continue reading. I believe you will find this letter an interesting read. You may even want to follow …

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Letter: Is RI Energy taking advantage of its customers?

Posted

To the Editor:

If you receive a monthly billing statement from RI Energy you will want to continue reading. I believe you will find this letter an interesting read. You may even want to follow up with the RI Public Utilities Commission and inquire about these charges.

RI Energy serves 792,000 customers, both residential and commercial. Every customer is billed at least $6 monthly for a “customer charge” and a $4 charge for “RE Growth Program” - 89% are residential users; 11% are commercial. [Source – RI Public Utilities Commission Customer Service Office.]

The Customer Charge for commercial customers can range from a low of $6 to a high of $21,000 per month. Obviously, commercial customers are categorized differently.

“Customer Charge” is the cost of providing customer related services such as metering, meter reading and billing. These fixed costs are unaffected by the actual amount of “electricity you use. How then is the customer charge relevant to the cost of energy actually used?

“RE Growth Program” covers the cost of the renewable energy Growth Program, established by RI law, that supports the development of eligible energy resources.

So how does RI Energy profit from these regular monthly charges?
$6 x 12 x 792,000 = $57,024,000
$4 x 12 x 792,000 = $38,016,000
Total per year = $95,040,000 (million!)

It is worth noting that some commercial users pay a monthly customer charge that is significantly greater than $6.

The question I have is whether these regular monthly charges paid by every customer of RI Energy, in addition to other usage and distribution cost items, are reasonable, necessary and legitimate costs of doing business or might they be providing RI Energy with unjustified windfall profits at customers expense?

I have asked the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission for its answer. I will let you all know when/if I receive a response.

Peter Hewett
Wendy Drive

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