Politics & Government

Berliner Calls for Better Electricity Service with 'Utility 2.0'

Montgomery County Council Member Roger Berliner asked the Maryland Public Service Commission to require that substantial changes be made to electricity services in the state.

Is better electricity service in the future for Montgomery County?

Montgomery County Council Member Roger Berliner—chair of the council's Transportation, Infrastructure, Energy and Environment Committee—is pushing to make that happen.

On Tuesday, Berliner filed a formal pleading asking the Maryland Public Service Commission to implement the "Utility 2.0" pilot program developed by the Energy Future Coalition, which was tasked by Governor Martin O'Malley's Grid Resiliency Task Force to come up with recommendations for improving electricity service in Maryland.

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The Utility 2.0 pilot program is "a system truly worthy of the 21st century—cleaner, more reliable, efficient, technologically advanced and consumer-driven. Montgomery County residents deserve nothing less," Berliner said.

In comparison, Montgomery County's current electricity service (provided by Pepco) is "a vestige of century-old thinking."

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"Our utilities are inherently conservative and not innovators," Berliner said.

"It is the job of our state regulators who have 100 percent control over our utilities to ensure that we fully grasp the benefits of a transformed utility system. I urge them to accept this challenge and move Montgomery County and Maryland forward," he said.

Berliner has been a critic of Pepco for some time—particularly after the derecho of June 29, 2012, when as many as 443,000 area residents were left without power, some for up to a week or more, as Pepco struggled to restore service to all customers.

"Our residents have had enough," Berliner said in a statement last July, Patch reported.

"While [the derecho] was a big storm and outages are to be expected, Pepco’s performance—on every level—was unacceptable. The length of the outages. The appalling communications. The computer glitches and data discrepancies. The list can go on and on," he said.

He called for Pepco to reorganize and update its computer system, data retention capacity and communications, and to modernize the power grid—including undergrounding power lines and adding redundant feeders—so that it can withstand future storms like the derecho.

Meanwhile, last fall, Pepco filed its most recent rate increase request, for $60.8 million, Patch reported. The rate increase request has two parts to it:

  • An increase in rates (about $7.13 more a month for typical customers) that would pay for improvements that Pepco began making to its distribution system in 2010, and which are still in progress.
  • A three-year grid resiliency charge to cover additional, accelerated enhancements to the distribution system to meet the recommendations of the Maryland Grid Resiliency Task Force. For typical customers, this charge would be $0.96 a month in the first year, $1.70 a month in 2015 and $1.93 a month in 2016, according to a Pepco statement.

The increase would pay for improvements that Pepco is in the process of making to its distribution system, Pepco officials said.

In July 2012, the Maryland Public Service Commission approved $18 million of a $60 million rate increase request made by Pepco earlier in the year, Patch reported.

The Energy Future Coalition's "Utility 2.0" pilot that Berliner supports includes:

  • Performance-based rate-making, by aligning the financial returns of utilities with how they perform on key metrics.
  • Having a smarter, customer-driven grid, giving customers more control over their energy consumption using advanced, real-time technologies.
  • "On-bill" financing, allowing utilities to finance and customers to repay efficiency investments directly through their bills.
  • Micro-grids, allowing neighborhoods and customers using large amounts of electricity to use distributed, renewable power with far greater reliability.
  • Support for electric vehicle deployment, requiring utilities to provide substantial initial cost vouchers in exchange for customers allowing utilities to manage their charging.

Do you think better electricity service is possible for Montgomery County? Do you think Pepco should be able to increase its rates before or after improvements have been made? Tell us in the comments. 


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