CPUC Workshop - 2020-11-12
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California Public Utilities Commission
Follow its sittingsSpeaker 3
As a result, the PUC staff worked with this information and used it in follow-up to the workshop and engaged with the IOUs on their plans and put into place some of these recommendations that were made by parties. And among them were to do more expanded outreach informing customers of their energy savings opportunities that are there for them. Also, there were some measures that were taken to implement workarounds and extensions for carrying out certain programs such as the self generation incentive program and energy efficiency programs that traditionally require face to face interactions. Next slide, please. So, the electric side, there is something called the high usage charge, which applies to residential tier grade customers with very high electric usage that exceeds 400% of their baseline quantity.
And it's there intended to be a price signal to encourage conservation for those customers that have extremely high electric usage. But there is some concern that due to the stay at home orders, people would be consuming more electricity really without any ability to manage that. And that would then cause them to go up into the
Speaker 4
half usage rate levels that would then cause significant bill impacts. So in May, the PUC issued decision 2,005.13 to temporarily reduce the high usage charge for the three large IOUs from the 75% level of the Tier two price to a 25% of the Tier two price level. And this was done to provide measure of bill relief to the customers starting in June 2020 through the October.
Speaker 3
Later, the PUC extended that price reduction so that it remains in effect until the PUC's Executive Director tells the IEE is to return the high usage charge to its original levels. The PUC also adopted two decisions, one in April for PG and E and for Southern California Edison. And again in May for the smaller utilities Liberty and Pacific Core to mitigate the effects of increased residential electric bills when the pandemic started by taking the California climate credit for electric residential customers and advancing those payments so that they were received earlier in the year during the summer months when bills are expected to be highest. And so for PG and E and Southern California Edison, they received their fall credit split between the months of May and June. And the Liberty customers received their fall credit in July and Pacific Core customers received their fall credit split between June and July.
There were some other measures that were taken for San Diego gas and electric customers. The PUC delayed an increase in core commercial and industrial bills on the gas side through December 31 with the resulting accrued under collections to be paid by the same customer class and amortized over two years beginning next year. And for semi evasive electric customers, the seasonal differential from tiered rates and the residential default time of use rates was reduced to help manage summer bills. Next slide. Another major provision action that was taken was that the commission's marketing campaign, the Energy Upgrade California brand and marketing campaign was reoriented to communicate to Californians about additional ways to save energy and reduce bills while spending more time at home during the pandemic.
In April, we quickly pivoted the messaging from broader energy saving tips for residential and small business customers to focus on residential customers spending a greater amount of time at home. And this was done through a combination of TV and social media campaigns that were launched initially in April and have been ongoing since then. Next slide. The CARE, FARA and ESIP programs are designed to provide support to assist low income customers to pay their bills. And the PUC encourage the IUs to support low income and vulnerable populations through marketing to increase the enrollment and accessibility of these programs.
And this was done through the utilities doing significantly more marketing and signing up our customers, getting more enrollment. There was also a all party meeting for the CARE program that was held on May 22 to discuss additional strategies for outreach and data sharing. And we will be seeing a presentation from Emma Johnston later in workshop that will cover some of the program enrollment numbers that we've been seeing as a result of these activities. The PUC also directed the utilities to offer a sixty day advanced payment to contractors implementing the ESA program, which is a weatherization energy efficiency programs for income qualified customers. As shelter in place orders forced a hiatus on-site work that made up the bulk of the ESA program.
And 65 ESA implementers and contractors accepted over $43,000,000 in advanced payments for labor and non labor costs during the program suspension. IOUs also temporary are also temporarily allowing self certification of income via an affidavit. Next
Speaker 3
Some actions that have been taken on the energy efficiency program side. One is that most of the programs, they typically require a face to face contact. And this was suspended around March. And that suspension was subsequently lifted in May and early June of this year. The programs have transitioned to on-site inspections.
Now with technical assistance and audits, training and evaluation activities, moving to virtual platforms when possible. They're also offering higher rebates for certain measures and programs. And all of the energy efficiency program administrators are required to file new business plans by September 2021 because of the COVID-nineteen crisis for a ruling in July. Next slide, please. So turning to the topics of the day, this workshop will explore basically what has happened in the energy sector.
Since the workshop that we held in April, what has changed? What do we need to be aware of? And so that we can be informed as to what potential actions that the PUC may need to take to respond to that. Also, how our customers have been impacted as shown by the data and as heard through customer contacts that are contacting the utilities and the CPUC. We're also going to be looking at what will be the impact of lifting the disconnections moratorium in April 2021.
And what innovative solutions from other states could the CPUC explorer to help customers in this time. Next slide, please. Just a walkthrough of the agenda. So our first segment is treating the basically an assessment of current customer impacts. At 09:30, we'll be looking at some of the data and what the data is telling us.
And then at 09:50, we'll have a panel to hear from panelists about what we're hearing from customers based on their work with customers and what are some of the key trends and insights that are out there that we should be aware of and potentially responding to. And we'll then turn to Q and A and take a break. And then the second segment will be on identifying potential new actions that the CPC could take to address customer impacts. Beginning at 11AM with current California policies. And then at 11:10, we will have a panel to get ideas about what's going on in other states and with other utilities.
And panelists may address other states' actions that they're taking to protect customers in this time. And we'll learn from what's going on in other states. And then we'll go to Q and A with the audience. And that will wrap us up for the day. So with that, I think it's time now to turn back to the remainder of the workshop agenda.
Thank you very much.
Speaker 5
Wonderful. Thank you, Simon. And I also want to recognize that we have the President, Commissioner Thatcher, Commissioner Rexhafen and Commissioner Schruma with us as well. So that's wonderful as we move into our next segment where we'll first hear from Emma Johnston on what the data are telling us, the impact to customers from COVID.
Speaker 6
I think we can move on to the next slide. Great. So my name is Emma Johnston, and I'm an analyst at the CPUC, and I'm just going to be going over some broad trends that we've observed since the beginning of the pandemic in March. You can go to the next slide. So these are four broad trends that we've seen across the four large IOUs, so that's PG and E, Southern California Edison, SoCalGas and SDG and E.
So the first is that residential customer energy usage has increased, which we already talked a little bit about. The second is that enrollment in our bill assistance payment programs has increased. The third is that customers are having larger and older arrearages. And the fourth is that the number of customers with bill payment arrangements has decreased overall. Please go to the next slide.
So this is the first trend that, residential customer energy usage has increased. So for both electric and gas, we've seen an increase in residential customer, energy usage and a decrease in commercial and industrial, energy usage. So there's been a less pronounced increase for gas, because we've been in summer months, and a more pronounced increase for electric for residential usage. And this is comparing March 2019 energy usage versus March 2020 energy usage. And we can go to the next slide.
So this is just another way of looking at that same information, and this plots 2020 electric usage versus 2019 electric usage. So a percent increase would be above that zero line, and we see that for residential care and non care for all months from March to October, there's been an increase for these customers in electric usage, starting with the beginning of the pandemic and people staying at home and working from home and going to school from home. And then we see a decrease. So for all in commercial customers, we're seeing that their usage has decreased and they're below that zero line. You can go to the next slide.
And then this is this information for gas usage. So the percent increase for residential customers has been a little less pronounced, but for most months from March to October, you can see those light green dots are residential customers and they're above that zero line. So we've seen a percent increase for gas usage and then a percent decrease for, commercial and industrial usage. And we can go to the
Speaker 6
second trend that we've seen, which is enrollment in our bill payment assistance programs that are income qualified has increased. So for CARE, we've seen an 11% increase in enrollment from March to September 2020, which represents about 507,000 new customers for CARE. For FARA, we've seen a 41% increase in enrollment from March to September 2020, which represents around 22,000 new customers for, FARA. So FARA has been under enrolled historically, so it makes sense that we're seeing a larger percent increase for this program than we are seeing for care because our penetration rate or the number of customers that are enrolled for care is a lot higher in months that are not COVID months, just in regular, quote unquote normal times. And another important thing to note is that we've suspended some of the recertification and enrollment requirements for both of these programs, which could also help explain some of that increase.
And then we can go to the next slide. So this graph shows the percent of residential customers that are enrolled in care broken down by each IOU. So you can see that since March, there's been an increase for all four of the large IOU's and that dotted line shows the increase overall. So for SoCalGas, we can see that the increase has been most pronounced as well as for Southern California Edison and then PG and E and SDG and E are below that. But there's been an about 3% increase overall in this percent of total residential customers that are enrolled in care from March until September.
We can go to the next slide. And then this graph just shows the percent change month over month in care and THERRA enrollment since February, so since the beginning of the year, and you can see that there was a pretty large spike in April, especially for FARA, and then there was another spike in August for enrollment. You can go to the next slide, please. So this third trend that we're seeing is that customers have larger and older arrearages. So for this slide, we are comparing the number of customers with arrearages by amount owed, and we're looking at September 2019 versus September 2020.
So we use the same month to try and cancel out for other factors that might be affecting this. So this graph on the left hand side, you can see that overall, the number of customers with the re ridges in September 2019 versus 2020 has not actually increased. There's actually been a slight decrease in customers with any re ridge, and this information is broken down by amount. It's hard to see because you can see the bulk of customers still have that $500 or less in arrearages, but then when we take a closer look at the graph on the right hand side, which breaks down the percent change of customers with certain arrearages amounts in September 2019 versus 2020, we can see that there's been a substantial percent increase in the number of customers with these issues, especially for that over $500 in arrearage amount. So for example, if we zoom in on the fact that for Care and Fair customers, the number of customers with over 1,000 in arrearages has increased over 400%.
So I think this kind of just shows something that we probably already are aware of, which is the fact that the economic impacts of the pandemic are having the biggest impact on customers that were already in those lower income brackets at the beginning of the pandemic or prior to it. And then these statistics at the bottom of the screen show that show just how many customers that represent. So, it shows the percent increase for care and FARA and the number of customers that represents for those combined categories. And we can go to the next slide. So this graph shows the information that I just described in the previous slide, but broken down by each of the four IOUs.
So you can see that there's a common trend for all four IOUs that you're seeing the largest increase in the $1,000 to $2,000 and over $2,000 categories per percent change in a arrearage amount. And this is again looking at September 2019 versus 2020. You can see that for the less than $500 in arrearages, the number of customers, there's actually been a percent decrease in customers with that lowest amount of arrearage. We can go to the next slide. So instead of showing the total number of customers with arrearages, this just shows the outstanding dollar amount.
So the outstanding customer balance is owed to all four of those IOUs for September 2019 versus September 2020. So the left two columns show how much money was owed that was aging one month. So one month old in outstanding balances. The second two columns in the middle show aging two months, and the right two columns show aging three months. And you can see that the largest increase has been in those arrearages that are old.
Three plus So the arrearage amounts are older than they were in 2019. And this is, again, looking at a snapshot of where we were at in September 2019 versus September 2020 year to date. And we can go to the next slide, please. One more thing we wanted to note is that So the resolution that provided emergency customer protections for residential and small commercial customers. Did not cover medium and large commercial customers.
So there are some medium and large commercial customers who haven't paid their bills and have not arranged a payment plan and are at imminent risk of disconnection. We estimate that there are probably 6,000 to 7,000 medium and large commercial customers at some risk of disconnection, so not at imminent risk, but, at potential risk of being disconnected in the future if they don't enroll in one of those payment plans. We can go to the next slide. So this is the fourth and final trend, which is that across the utilities, so on the aggregate, the number of customers with bill payment arrangements has decreased overall since the beginning of the year. So this shows the customers with three plus month bill payment arrangements.
And you can see that the beginning of the year, there were around 160,000 customers on these longer payment arrangement plans. And then in September, it's dropped down to around 97,000 customers. And this is the trend like aggregated across the utilities, but we're going to see a little bit of a difference when we break it down by utility. I guess, so the utilities are sort of speculating that this might be because of the disconnection moratorium and the fact that since people's power is not going to be shut off, there's less of an incentive to enroll in one of these bill payment arrangements despite the fact that as we saw from some of the previous slides, people's arrearage amounts are really pretty quickly increasing in those larger arrearage amount categories. So this could be sort of like an impending problem if it's not addressed.
And then we can go to the next slide, please. So this shows the percent increase in customers with those longer bill payment arrangements, and it breaks it down by IOU, so you can see it's a little bit different by IOU, and that for SDG and E and for SoCalGas, we saw a pretty large increase at the beginning of the pandemic in customers that were seeking out these longer bill payment arrangements, and then it's of levelled off for all the utilities since then. And we can go to the next slide. And this information compares, so the previous two slides were sort of showing what the percent change has been since just the 2019, I mean, 2020, sorry, wrong year, and this information shows how our 2020 data compares to data from 2019. So you can see that for and
Speaker 6
California Edison, there's actually been a pretty substantial increase in the percent of customers with those three plus month payment arrangements for 2019 versus 2020, but then there has been a decrease for PG and E and for SoCalGas, but since PG and E has the highest amount of customers, it's what's sort of driving this trend of seeing fewer customers in these long payment arrangements. And then we can go to the next slide. And then we can pause for questions now. We have utility experts on the line, so they'll be able to answer any utility specific questions you might have, and we also have energy division staff that are more of subject matter experts in this than I am that will be able to answer your questions.
Speaker 7
Hi, this is Amy Madrovian from Energy Division. Let's open it up to commissioners. If you have any questions on the data, please feel free to unmute yourselves and ask your questions.
Speaker 8
Okay. This is Commissioner Guzmana Seves. Thank you very much. That was really helpful and very concerning. I just had one comment and then a question.
One was just, and I know that Ben is going to be speaking of this, but I did just want to clarify for folks that the interim protection, some of the interim protection been made permanent, particularly the provisions on reconnection fees and deposit fees are no longer required at all. So those are not contingent on the order. As well as the payment plan duration and that twelve months have to be offered for a customer can be disconnected moving forward. So I just wanted to make that point now. Will be made later.
A question for Emma, which is I think at one point I heard you say that the increase in care participation was only 3% and I also heard you say it was 11%. Maybe ask you to clarify. I
Speaker 6
see what you're asking now. So the percent increase in carrier enrollment has been 11%, which is 507,000 new customers. The 3% represents the fact that
Speaker 6
the beginning of the pandemic, around 26% of all of our residential customers were enrolled in care, and now around 29% of residential customers are enrolled in care, so overall for all of the utility customers, there has been an increase of those like three percentage points more are enrolled in care.
Speaker 8
Year over year, is that a year? I see. So that does that mean there was a dip in enrollment pre COVID, and then we gained eleven percent, but year over year, it's three percent?
Speaker 6
The three percent is just that so across residential customers, it was twenty six percent of all residential customers were enrolled in care, and then now it's twenty nine percent. I can also ask Gillian some of these questions if they're more specific since she's a subject matter expert on care and para.
Speaker 8
Okay, now that's helpful actually because it's a growth rate versus an overall rate and I've been looking at that growth rate I thought was overall. So really, in some sense, we really have a net 3% participation in care.
Speaker 11
Very, very insightful. On the on on a number of people who are that there are less people on the payment plan, and I
Speaker 11
that one of our panel members, Laura Dasadena, asked the question as well as far as do any of our subject matter experts know why are there less people on the payment plan and is there a minimum 20% payment to get on to the payment plan or how does this comport with the, disconnection proceeding that we had, adopted out in terms of handling arrearages? Any explanation as to why are there less people getting onto payment plans?
Speaker 6
So I'm probably going to pause and let a subject matter expert answer that question. Again, would kind of like to note that, so that that increase that decrease in the number of customers that have gotten onto a payment plan has really been driven by just two of the utilities, and then for the other two utilities, there's been an increase in the number of customers that have gotten on the payment plans. So the decrease that we're seeing is from PG and E and SoCalGas, which is driving down the total number of residential customers on payment plans, and then we've seen an increase for SDG and E and SME. Talking to PG and E utility representatives, they think that the reason is the answer that I had given previously, which is that because of the disconnection moratorium, there's usually what sort of like prompts the customer to get onto a payment plan is that disconnection notice, and since the disconnection notice isn't being sent out, they don't have that reminder or sort of prompt to get on a payment plan. But if there's a subject matter expert on the line that's able to answer that,
Speaker 14
Okay. I am not the subject matter expert on credit, but we do have the credit expert on the line. But I do believe it is a function of what Emma just said that we have seen a much lower volume of calls going into the contact center since the COVID and the moratoriums went into place. In addition, I see Lorenzo says that he cannot unmute, so I'll go ahead and answer. What we are in the process of doing now is creating letter that will be sent out to the customers who are behind, who have growing balances and to make them aware that their accounts are behind and providing them with some resources that they can access, which includes payment arrangements if they choose to contact us and get on that payment arrangement, extended payment arrangements as well as heavily promoting the LIHEAP program.
I recently chatted with Jason about this and we will be having Jason review the letter before it goes out as we will be promoting heavily the LIHEAP program and all the other payment assistance that customers can access from PG and E.
Speaker 4
Commissioner Gustafsson, can I ask a question? Okay. I'm going to take that as a yes. Yes. I had a question about the Care and Fair enrollments, but it looks like we had a pretty significant uptick in February in March, April, early months.
It's been continuing to go up at lower amounts, but leveling off over the summer and early fall. Maybe we should have we can ask utilities as well. Do we have an expectation that it sort of reached a point of market saturation? Or are do we expect more enrollments to as part of it depend on whether or not unemployment runs out, stimulus payments run out? Or where are we?
Do we feel like we got, most of the customers who were in need of assistance with this early wave of outreach and other changes to the program? Do we feel like there's another big untapped potential? Or is it just that we're waiting to see if the other shoe drops in terms of economic impacts, if you have a sense of that?
Speaker 14
This is Marlene from PG and E. Thank you. That's a good question, Commissioner Rexhaven. At PG and E, we have seen the penetration rate go up from 97% of the eligible customers up to 108%, which is where we are at and where we had forecasted that we would be somewhere by 106% of the estimated eligible population by the end of the year simply because we are not removing anyone from the program. And with the heavy marketing that has been done using both traditional and non traditional marketing channels.
We have seen certain promotional channels really deliver very strong drive very strong response such as the digital Google marketing. If somebody searches for EBT or CalFresh that it will pop up an ad about the care program. So we're trying all these new channels and they seem to be working well. We do expect that we will continue to see a little bit of growth maybe getting up to one hundred and nine percent. We have also seen in our Ferra enrollment that it has gone from thirteen percent pre COVID to twenty one percent at present.
So we do expect to see, but we think the majority of the customers who lost jobs have definitely begun to get the message and they have been enrolling. So we expect to see it taper off even though our aggressive marketing will be continuing. Thank you.
Speaker 11
has been enormously helpful and as you said earlier, somewhat difficult to see some of these numbers knowing full well that our fellow Californians are really suffering. So thank you, very good, data and good information and my fellow commissioners have asked clarifying questions that I had in mind. Thank you on that 3%. I was concerned about the same thing, Martha, so thank you and I'm looking forward to further presentations.
Speaker 7
Okay, great, thanks President Butcher. So Gillian, can you move on to the next slide please? Okay, so hi everyone, I'm Amy Mazrovian, I'm a supervisor in the CPUC Energy Division and I'll be facilitating our first panel of the workshop today to look at what we're hearing from customers. And we will have four panelists joining us here today, Carla Rumigi from the CPC Consumer Affairs Branch, Lourdes Oviva from the Flores Huerta Foundation, Kathy Andree from the California Department of Community Services and Development and Belle Martinez from Redwood Community Action Agency. So let me ask all of the panelists to please turn on your cameras and let's get ready for our panel.
But please keep yourself muted when you're not speaking. So first, each of the four panelists is going to give about a five to seven minute overview presentation and then we'll open it up for questions and answers at the end of that. So first, I will turn it over to Carla. And next slide, please.
Speaker 2
Good morning, everyone. My name is Carla Rumiji. I'm an analyst with the Consumer First Branch here at the PUC. And we'll be presenting an overview with contacts related to the coronavirus outbreak of the contracts we received in CAB from the period of March 15 through October 17, which covers the current COVID report that we've been putting out to the commissioners. This will be an emphasis on the contact related to energy.
Next slide, please. Very quick overview of what the consumer affair branch is. It's in essence is a let's say, it's the face of the commission when a consumer has a problem with the utilities issues with the utility providers. CAB receives contacts from the consumer both in phone and in writing. And just as a clarification, the contacts that we're receiving CAB are called informal contacts.
And those that are forward to the utilities for resolution are called informal complaints. When a consumer issue falls under the jurisdiction of the commission, the normal processes for phone contacts, the consumer has is transferred, as we call it, warm transfer to the utility's executive office. And the consumers is left in the capable hands of the utility and is instructed if they do not get a resolution, a satisfactory resolution, they should contact the the customer affairs branch in writing. There is normally no follow-up from CAB for phone contacts. During COVID or COVID related context, I'll to specify what the COVID related contexts are for us.
The process was changed to make sure there were follow ups from CAB to the utilities requesting a update on the resolution so we'll keep track of the resolutions and the dispositions of this written I'm sorry, phone contacts. For written, written contacts for CAB can take up to upwards of thirty days for a resolution. For those written contracts that we received that were identified as COVID related, they were fast tracked. And instead of submitting them through the normal channels, they were, immediately forward to the utilities via either emails or phone calls. And follow ups phone calls were always placed within few days just to make sure that there was a resolution and so we could keep track of those cases in particular.
In addition, Cabin made a very extra effort in helping consumers with non jurisdictional issues, such as Internet and cable. We had a lot of consumers contact at the beginning contacting us with regards to municipalities. And Cab made an extra effort to send the provide information to the consumers to the appropriate places where they could get this help that they need
Speaker 2
Okay. The effect of COVID in the context that we have received in CAB is very obvious. There has been a sharp decline. We can safely say that about 40% decline in consumer contacts to CAB from the same period March to September '2 of program, sorry, of 2019 when comparing. There's been a sharp decline about 40%, and we can safely assume that the consumer protections that are in place are the main reason for this decline.
For example, for communications, the moratoriums for lifeline, there has been a 50% reduction in contact from lifeline is due to the eliminations for requirements for recertification during the pandemic. For energy, we can also simply assume that this that also the reduction has been done is due to the protection set in place because while we assume if the consumer is not receiving the disconnection notices, they're not getting the fifteen day notice of the forty eight hours connection notice, there's no reason to contact CAB. So next slide please. So the COVID related 19 context, what does it mean to CAB and our reporting? CAB counts all payment arrangements and disconnection from our payments contacts that we received as cover related whether the consumer mentions it or not.
The same thing is for outages and I'll get to in a moment to why outages are so important. Other categories that are not I'm sorry. Other categories do require an active statement from the consumer saying that they have a problem due to pandemic, to covid-nineteen, the coronavirus, whatever way they want to refer to it. There has to be an active mention for those cases to be included into the COVID-nineteen related accounts. Between March 15, when we started reporting in October 19, which was the last report, CAVA received or identified seventeen forty three cover related contacts.
Communication accounts for 53% of those contacts and energy for 39% of those contacts. Water only has received 3% of the cover related contacts. And my apologies from the chart. Somewhere along the line I lost my legends. The bar chart indicates the energy related contacts and the line chart indicates the total COVID related contacts.
And so you can see how they relate one to another. Next slide, please. So what are we hearing from the consumers? At the early start of the quarantine consumers mentioned concerns about the high bills due to higher consumption because of stay at home about the peak time, time of use, higher rates, and they would like to have the race to be the same during the whole day while there were sheltering in place. Consumers requested that the baseline allotments be recalibrated to allow for higher consumption during the stay at home.
And during powdered outages, consumers were worried about losing food or refrigerated medications because they have been stockpiling due to COVID-nineteen and not being able
Speaker 2
to get supplies. And consumers express a lot of frustration with the timing and duration. So, cloud outages or otherwise which were interfering with the working from home and distance learning and consumers also another thing that we heard was where consumers protested there were some planned rate hikes during the pandemic. Next slide please. So sorry, the effect of the pandemic on the type of contacts that we receive.
Cal has always received contacts about high bills, the need for payment arrangements, extensions to avoid disconnections for non payments, and the help with restoring the service as a result of non pay. Cab has not received perceived a notable difference in the type of consumer contacts for assistance due to COVID-nineteen other than the onset where there were more contacts from customers who had lost their jobs and were concerned about the inability to pay their bill. We do not expect a big change in the context until the end of the moratoriums when the bills come due. Next slide, please. All right.
The top energy context related to COVID-nineteen as categories, cap categorizes the type of contacts that we receive in some discrete categories. And the bulk of the contacts are for outages. They comprise about forty seven percent of the contacts that we have received related to COVID. Again, I'll get back to outages in a moment. Payment arrangements comprise about sixteen percent of the cases that we receive in disconnection for our payment.
Contacts have declined considerably since March. As you can see on the graph is the representative with the blue line. I'm sorry, the blue columns. Have, like I said, they have declined since March, but unfortunately, we still receive complaints from consumers believing that they're in danger of the service have been disconnected. And I wanna give a couple of examples on that.
One of the examples one of the reasons why consumers are contacting CAB believing that they're going to be disconnected. We're getting few contacts from Edison consumers because it appears that even though they are adhering to the moratorium guidelines and they're not disconnecting consumers, consumers are still receiving notices that, don't clearly reflect the change in policy. But I do know that they have, received bills do state that they have passed the amounts, which leads to consumers to believe that they're going to be disconnected. We do understand that Edison is working with the CPUC regarding that. I believe they have mentioned something about their system not being able to accommodate the change or yeah, to eliminate the language that they're going to be disconnected and they're adding extra language in the back of the bill or somewhere trying to educate the consumer about the fact that no, it's just notice and they're not going to get disconnected.
Another reason why we're getting people contact us regarding disconnections, and this is, I believe, is mostly in the PG and E territory. It's a few consumers, I hesitate to say a lot, but a few consumers call us because they have been victim of scam callers who try to convince them that they're about to be disconnected because of past due amounts. And that is very disturbing. And in my opinion, and that suggests that the consumer should benefit from a campaign to make them aware of the different types of scams that they are not just during these times but also just at all times because that seems to be very prevalent that we get people who actually fall for the scams or just call us to confirm they are going to be disconnected or they know they're not going to be disconnected and they they call us to clarify or confirm that. Next slide please.
Sorry and you have about
Speaker 2
Okay. Okay. Why outages are important? The outages are important. Cam reports all outages.
Okay context related to COVID because of the direct impact the outages now. Not only when sheltering at home but working from home and the storm are. And, we see really a we report all all outages, plant outages, PSPSs, rolling blackouts, and that's where you see the big spike in August because there was the rolling blackouts that were mandated due to the heat wave, the California, so they meet August. Can I have the next slide please? Okay, and the last slide, this lastly, if this is a breakdown by the highest the top utilities receiving the highest number of complaints.
As you can see, it's the usual, the you know, the four top utilities received 97% of the complaints and all other utilities will have four or less contacts mostly have just one contact related to COVID. So that will do it for me. Thank you very much. And if you have any questions, we'll address them at the end of the panel.
Speaker 7
Great. Thank you so much, Carla, for giving us the lay of the land in terms of the types of customer contacts we receive at the CPUC. Next, I'm going to turn it over to Lourdes Oliva to give us her perspective from what she's hearing directly from customers in her work. Lourdes?
Speaker 13
Yes, good morning everyone and thank you for this space and for all the work that everybody is putting forth to ensure that Californians, you know, have an opportunity to survive not only this virus, because I myself was affected the last three weeks I've been fighting COVID, and getting to talk to participants and community members who are scared not only of the consequences the sickness brings, but also the social impact it has on them economically and in society. Unfortunately, it's being treated just like and the Spanish speaking community is just like caring that you got HIV. So it's unfortunate because that brings a lot of social stress. So I've been able to work with the Dolores Huerta Foundation for three years and in the communities of the Central Valley. I've been involved for twenty three years and fortunately local media and also community based organizations have always seen in my work and trust my information enough to ask me about what's going on with what a moratorium means.
That was the first interesting fact that I found in the community that even if, you know, the state issues information or in the news they say about this moratorium for it not to be disconnected, they're still not aware of how to deal with that data or that information. They don't know how to address that. The questions I posed to the community one was about the programs that we have with Carefarer and Medical Baseline and those. Most of the community members that I took a sample from, about 75 were aware of the products and I'm asking them too if they have used them or are currently used them. I would say 75% of them were taking advantage of those programs.
However, the ones that still were on those programs, the question was like, if they weren't on it, why? Some of them fell right at the cusp that they had to be sending in their paperwork by January, I guess, for the renewal. So maybe they fell off then. Getting back in has been more of a challenge because there's more of a waiting time, I guess, to address the reapplication or to check if they are on. Until we went in to look at their bills, was like, no, you are on it.
You're fine. But then they didn't understand the increase of usage hours and peak hour. You know, they didn't understand that. I had to take time to explain to them that, you know, during the day we have different hours. The field working community, like in agriculture, their working hours had always been not on peak hours because they would wake up three in the morning, get everything done.
By six in the morning, the kids were out to school. But now the increase of these community members, their bills have gone up higher and impacted more because now the kids are there and one parent has to stay. Now cooking is literally like twenty four hours a day per se. Unfortunately, the use of distance learning has made them feel very, very pressured to make sure to keep their energy bills on. So they were borrowing money and whatever funds they were given, if they even qualified for any state or federal funds, they use them right away to pay their utility bills as they fear not being able to have their kids safe at home.
So maybe another issue with the presentation I heard earlier about less people getting on payment plans, it's because most of these people, these ones that I spoke, didn't understand what it would mean that a moratorium is in place or that they're not going to be disconnected. So they don't trust us, so they might as well, you know, pay for those bills and stay without maybe a car payment or without an insurance payment. A lot of these community members, mostly women, express, you know, the stress of having to communicate now to their usual partners to help them when they didn't have money for energy bills. They have all mostly expressed to me that they were never offered more than three months for a payment plan and or given the option. One participant, she even told me, she even asked to ask her supervisor or the supervisor to see if they could stretch that payment out for more months meaning that the minimum payment they had to make to make the payment arrangement was not a possible one.
She straight out just told them out of frustration, I have five kids at home. Unfortunately, my husband is in jail now and in danger of deportation and you cannot disconnect me. You cannot disconnect me. I'll send what I can, which is $75 or this is what I can. I'm not saying I don't want to pay, but for her to have to get to that expression of private information and sensitive at that because she is undocumented, it was very hard for her.
So for me that broke my heart that they would have to be put in that position. So I asked her, well, your bill, do you see anything that tells you you could get help? She says, Yeah, I called those numbers. I called those numbers and this is what was always stated to me. This is the way it is, how much you have to pay, and this is the kind of payment plan you have to do.
So I think that the customer care part has to increase to the point that we are more sensitive to understand that people who have arrears from prior to COVID have a different experience to approach for finding help with assistance and getting their bills paid. And also there is new people that I have senior citizens that have never had to do let's say, energy bill assistance because they usually could cover it with a little bit of social security or pension money they had. Now they have increased their family members because of COVID. Some of their grandkids who are college students had to come live with them because they didn't fit in their parents' home. So now their senior citizens are found with higher utility bills because they have more people at home and they trying to look for help, found it more troubling and hurtling, I guess you would say, to find assistance with LIHEAP programs.
They felt that the community based organizations, they have never addressed them. They don't know the lingo or how things work. Obviously, they probably are not as tough as poor people are. Poor people have to put up with a lot in customer service when they're looking for help with their bills. Whereas someone that has never used the system for assistance, it's a little bit more sensitive or more, I would say,
Speaker 13
would I say, we're not used to it. We're used to being consumers who pay and we have a right to ask for you to treat us right. But when you're asking for something, I think that they don't know how to address us. So most of them express frustration with being able to communicate and not be hurt. I kind of have the feeling that they felt they were being hurt by the way they were being treated by those people who could possibly help them with a bill payment or assistance to pay it off.
So this is where we're at. It's unfortunate. The enrollments, as I was looking at your charts, was very interesting to me, especially because I would like to see data to this. It reflects, okay, we had 100 calls, 100 calls. We got 10 people who were able to make a payment arrangement plan or that was what they were calling for and that maybe they were deterred from getting on the payment plan because they could not meet that minimum payment.
So I think everybody's work and I'm glad that California has such a system to be able to dialogue and work something out because coming months is going to be tougher as part of what they call the third wave of this pandemic and we have to look forward to that. Now it's going to get even stronger because we have to be inside. I mean, in Brazil, it was 32. So we're going to be seeing a lot more issues with them being charged more and having less power to understand how to find help. Then two, the last point I really wanted to make was that I feel that all IOUs need to be more aggressive in helping us, all Californians understand peak hour usage, lots, the tiers like they were mentioning, you know, people who are even on solar energy like NAM use, they're still affected by these charts.
If we don't understand layman's terms, what that means, we're not
Speaker 13
be able to conserve or save money. So even if we're on CARE or unfair or any of the other programs. Thank you, Amy, for this opportunity.
Speaker 7
Yeah, thanks so much, Lourdes, for sharing those stories directly from customers and for letting us know about how sometimes it's difficult for customers to kind of understand or the programs that are out there. So, thank you, Lourdes. And next I will turn it over to Kathy Andree with the California Department of Community Services and Development. Thank you, Casey.
Speaker 9
Thank you. Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to be part of this workshop today. I just wanted to provide a brief overview of the department, talk about some of the data we're seeing from our customer contact, and talk about some key partnerships that we worked with in response to COVID. So with that, if you can go to the next slide.
The Department of Community Services and Development, we oversee of the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, you've heard it called LIHEAP today, and in July I just wanted to mention that we also received CARES Act funding that supplements the LIHEAP program as well. The LIHEAP program provides an array of services to help low income families better manage the financial burdens of their home energy costs and overcome energy related emergencies. Some of the services we provide is financial assistance to help pay their or help offset their energy bill. We also provide weatherization services to improve the energy efficiency of their homes and we provide emergency services such as preparedness education services. We recently implemented providing battery powered backup devices to help minimize the impacts of the public safety power shut offs and we also provide repair services to appliances that may threaten the health and safety of the customer.
LIHEAP grant funds that we do oversee are very limited. We're only able to serve about 6% of the eligible population on an annual basis and we do work closely and administer these funds through 41 non profit and local government organizations throughout the state. We refer to them here at CSD as local service providers and you'll hear me say LSPs for short. Last year the LSP network provided LIHEAP services to over 223,000 low income households. If you go to the next slide, I'll just touch on some data points.
Since March at CSD we have seen an increase in the need for LIHEAP services across the state. The first data point is the number of calls that we have received from the public seeking services, seeking LIHEAP assistance. As you can see in the first graph, starting in April we saw an increase of about 31% in call volume in CSD's call center in comparison to last year and you'll see in July we saw the largest increase of about 67% increase in call volume in comparison to last year. The second data point in the graph is illustrating the calls that we have been receiving from households indicating that they have been impacted by COVID. You can see between the two data points it definitely confirms that between May and September well over half of the callers seeking information for LIHEAP assistance were directly related to COVID or a financial impact due to the pandemic.
I just want to say that this data is specific to CSD's call centre and calls to our LSD may show different trends which you may hear from Val here in our next presentation. I also want to mention too that at CSD we have seen a definite increase in the foot traffic to our website with the majority of their visits looking for information on utility assistance. Next slide please. I just want to touch on some key partnerships that centered on contributions to how CSD's response to the COVID crisis. CSD's first partnership was with our LSTs and the Energy Council.
CSD consistently engages with our LSPs concerning elements of local planning to promote effective program administration. In keeping with this, CSD did convene some meetings with its energy council which is an advisory body to CSD which is representative of select LST members to help inform us in our decision making when we did receive the CARES Act funding. It also needed adjustments to the regular LIHEAP funding that we also oversee. Through these conversations, CSD and its LSPs were able to accomplish an accelerated implementation of the CARES Act program and provide a program framework that extended services to as many impacted households as possible, especially in light of the state's high unemployment rates. We also ensured that program operation resiliency at the local level by providing resources to our LSPs to purchase personal protective equipment, to also adopt safe work practices to ensure that the workers and the customers that we serve are safe, and we placed an emphasis on essential services, utility assistance and emergency services.
Next slide please. Another key partnership was our interactions with the investor owned utilities and other state utilities. Around July, we convened some meetings with the state utility reps to discuss plans for implementing the CARES Act program and to provide implementation overviews of our regular annual LIHEAP funding. Definitely these meetings were informative, made us a better understanding of how the utilities were responding to the COVID crisis with the establishment of moratoriums statewide. Also better understanding of customer changes in behavior, which you've seen quite a bit of data already on how they're managing their utility bills, how usage has really gone up due to the shelter in place orders and also being made aware of suspension to utility weatherization services.
We also got input from the utilities on adjustments to financial assistance benefits for CARES and we identified opportunities where we could work with utility companies to further assist in the outreaching of LIHEAP to low income utility customers. For example, CSD and PG and E have engaged in an innovative marketing campaign. Under a data sharing agreement between CSD and PG and E. PG and E has been providing customer information to our LSPs to provide direct marketing of LIHEAP services to customers with higher rearages. We just recently implemented this outreach effort.
It's a little bit premature to understand the customer's response to the outreach, but we definitely see the strong potential in having this customer information to make very direct targeted outreach to help those customers exhibit the great need which you've definitely seen through the data in preventing disconnections. We do encourage that the other IOUs partner with CSD and LSVs to provide similar customer lists for this direct marketing outreach. Another thing I wanted to mention was CSD has developed a LIHEAP outreach digital toolkit that does contain general messaging to promote LIHEAP. The outreach toolkit was made available to IOUs and also to the LST network as an outreach resource as well. Next slide please.
The third key partnership is in May CSD and the CPUC entered into MOU, Memorandum of Understanding, to enhance coordination to help reduce energy burden of low income customers throughout the state, reduce the amount of utility disconnections, and create an energy resource statewide. Through this MOU, the CSD and CPUC, we've made some improvements to the way that IOUs are handling the LIHEAP payments, also pledge processes to prevent disconnections and we strengthen collaboration between the IOUs, CST and LSPs to ensure the online portals that are currently being worked on and also working on the new arrears management plans, the percentage of income payment plans to ensure that they deliver on their useful and full potential. In closing, I just want to say as the impact of COVID and pandemic continues and persists to be understood, it is essential that our continued coordination efforts are going to be necessary. We need to continue to work together, strengthen the IOUs, CSD, LSPs to ensure that energy access for financially challenged Californians is very coordinated and that we provide all available resources to the customers, especially when moratorium now, even more so now, there will be a great need when the moratoriums are lifted.
So thank you. I look forward to the questions when we get to the Q and A session.
Speaker 7
with that overview, we're going to turn it over to Val Martinez of Redwood Community Action Agency, which is one of the local service providers or LSPs that Kathy was just mentioning. Val will give us a little bit of a deeper look into her interactions with customers via the LIHEAP program. Val, think you're muted. You want to unmute yourself.
Speaker 15
the local service providers, changing customer interaction since COVID, providing some information on customer feedback on energy use and their ability to pay the bills, and touched slightly on the pilot that we're participating with CSG and PG and E to target services for customers with high bills. Next slide, please. So Cathy did a good job of describing the local service provider network or LSPs. And we are a variety of different types of agencies, community action agencies, private nonprofits, local governmental, entities. And our role really is to provide, outreach education and enrollment for eligible low to moderate income households for the program.
We coordinate these services with the IOUs and the state to maintain essential home heating for eligible households. We also work with the IOUs and non regulated utility companies to purchase the essential heating fuels and make payment arrangements for clients' energy bills, including a large number of past due bills that are held on arrearage. We assist these clients with the planning of and making payment arrangements to prevent termination, and we coordinate services with the LIHEAP program. In some instances, in the past, we've also had to require that our clients make co payments in order to maintain their services. So it's changed a lot, though, since COVID.
So next slide, please. So, RIPET has now changed the way that we deliver our services. We're primarily a mail in process right now, whereas in the past forty years, it's all been direct contact. We've had to implement these these safety precautions to protect ourselves and the public. We no longer hold our weekly outreach and education workshops in the office or handle large volumes of clients coming into the office with shutoff notices for help.
We can no longer implement our robust outreach program, which we did a lot of work throughout the entire year going out to local reservations, rancherias, remote communities, senior housing projects. We went out to where the people needed to help the most. But that now has all been changed because of the advent of COVID. We now have to limit the number of people coming into our office to initiate services because of social distancing and the fact that we have a very small office. We're now finding that we actually have to go out and reach out for these folks rather than having to go out and wait for them or go out and do our outreach services.
So it's really changed the way that we do business. Next slide, please. So the number of people calling, and I thought that was really interesting because CSD's experience at their call centers is very different from our experience. With the advent of COVID and the shelter in place orders, our calls into our office dropped by 80%, and I actually think it was closer to 90%. I think my staff, when I asked them this question, were thinking more in the current rather than the past because as as the joke goes, it was like crickets in the office.
No one was calling. No one was coming in. Everyone was staying home. Clients were more focused on the virus and they were afraid to go out. They were afraid to even go out and gather the required information in order to complete their applications, which has really slowed down the process.
Initially, was partially impacted by the fact that governmental offices and the places where they could normally go and get the information that was required to complete their application and verify their income were closed. Now they're up and running, but there's still that that fear of going out. And in some parts of the of California as well, no. There's huge spikes in the number of cases that are occurring, and people are very much afraid. We're no longer getting the calls from sister agencies in local level referring people with shut off notices to us because of the moratorium.
And this used to take place frequently. We worked a lot of the Indian tribes. We worked with Indian TANF. We worked with health clinics, senior programs. Welfare department would send people to us.
We had a lot of strong collaborative partners that provided us leads. Clients are aware that they're not getting shut offs, but they're not quite making the connection with the moratorium. But the net result is they've stopped worrying about the bill. Next slide, please. So the virus remains, as I mentioned, on the top of everyone's mind.
And these we're hearing this over and over again. That along with the wildfires, and we had a number of wildfires in our county this summer, and that was true, I think, throughout California. So wildfires, the virus, the uncertainty of the future, people are really kind of hot in the crossroads. They really don't quite know what to do. We have a growing number of clients, who are now starting to contact us with the change in the weather.
It's getting colder. Lord has mentioned the fact that they were down in the thirties in Fresno. We're in the thirties in Humble in Eureka, which is unusual for us this time of the year because that's that's pretty cold pretty early. But they're worried about their energy bills. They're worried about rent.
We are getting calls about water bills, and we are seeing about 30% new people into our program. People who previously didn't come to us, whether it's because they're underemployed or unemployed or they now they find themselves in a position where they do need help, they're calling us. The majority of the clients who are calling, though, as I mentioned, they're not really aware of the moratorium per se or the fact that it's going to be expiring in April. And so they're really not prepared to deal with it, James. Some of the clients say they don't know what to do, and and they have no plan.
I was listening to a senior home specialist who works primarily with clients who are 70 and above and homebound disabled or homebound disabled. And I was listening to a conversation she had with a 93 year old lady. And the woman called. She was really size and stuff. She had a bill.
It was couple months old, she wasn't sure what to do. She was worried about what her future held. She said, I don't really have a plan on calling you for help because I just don't know what to do. And that's kind of consistent with people who are calling us.
Speaker 15
the households that we see see this as a respite period. The people who've noticed that they're not getting shut off notices. And some of these people are using this time as a bill balancing tool. They're paying off some of their other non energy bills that are critical, like rent, where they can't afford to pay it. So they're doing that.
They're looking at other bills that need to be paid. Right now, because PG and E is not shutting off in our area and they're not issuing shutoff notices, that scene is something that can be put in a bayonet, and they'll deal with that when they have to deal with it. So one senior referred to it as a breather. This is giving me a breather. And when you're living on SSI or Social Security or other fixed income TANF, and you're doing everything you can possibly do to pay all your bills, to keep your family fed, to keep your family clothed and housed during this time, and and try to have a decent life.
It's hard to keep all the bills covered. So this period has been used as a grieving by all the population, generally speaking. And so many of these households who're dealing with it, but they're putting it in advance and they know that they'll have to deal with it later. Roughly speaking though, even with that said, about half the population that we're serving right now are viewing this as such and but are still trying to make payments. They may still have those arrearages, but they're trying to stay current with their bills.
Our education with them is if you're gonna make payment arrangements or if you're going to have these bills, you make your payment arrangements, pay what you can. Don't offer to pay more than what you can in order to make them feel better or to make the utility company feel like they're going to work with you more if you can pay more. Make sure that you pay your bill. Make sure that you pay it on time, and make sure that you're consistent with it and that you can afford it. But like I said, $50.50 is half say they can go ahead, and they'll they're trying hard right now to make it their bill payments, and the other half are just letting it slide.
And as one person put it, they're riding the wave until they have to do. And and that's kind of what's happening right there that we're seeing out in the field. And to that end, to try to help people with their arrearages. Next slide, please. We're working with PG and E and the state on a pilot project.
Redwood was one of the agencies who volunteered to be part of this, and we've received a list of about three seventeen clients, and we're targeting from that list clients with bills that are $2,000 or less. Of the 317 clients, the lowest bill was $40. The highest bill was $20,000.991 and 2¢. Now that's an outrageous amount. So 77% were below 2,016 percent were below 4,000, the balance were within that higher range.
Some of these folks in the higher range, I don't know how that's ever going to be like that, but we'll see. Our goal is to work with the people that we can afford to help through either combination of payment plans, combining the energy programs that we currently have, CARES and our regular LIHEAP. Soon we'll have the 2021 LIHEAP. Our goal is to get them out of the hole. We want to make them whole so they can have a fresh start and try to keep up with bills as they come along.
Our clients, as I mentioned earlier, are educated to stay current on your bill, but moratorium is going to be lifted, you need to be mindful of that. The breather period is going to end soon, so get ahead the wave. And if you make a payment plan, make
Speaker 15
Make sure you pay it. I think that this is a very helpful approach. I would ex I would recommend this expansion with a few changes to improve its success. One of the problems that we had, and I was really interested in hearing earlier about the scams because my clients or my staff received this list. But to my knowledge, there was no letter from the utility company introducing the fact that we were going to be contacting their customers and that they had provided a list.
So when we started calling, there was a great deal of resistance, and people would hang up on us because they thought we were one of the PG scammers, and they didn't really want to to listen to staff or participate in the program. Even after we're able to convince them that this is not the case, we still are finding that there's a slowness in returning paperwork and there's not that even though they're in a high bill stress situation, there's still a bit of slowness to the turnaround and getting the information in. So I think that it'd be really important for the utilities to communicate the moratorium lift that will be coming, the fact that, you know, they want to work with them, they wanna work with the local service providers, and help them get ahead of the wave, and that this is a legitimate program, and that they should be working with us to help in a speedy manner to get out of this situation. One other thing I would offer in terms of improving its success, we had one client who had a very large bill, and, she was on a paperless payment program. So she hadn't been receiving a bill and everything was in email, and it just totally went by her.
And I think she had, like, a $4,000 bill. So in her mind, she wasn't getting bills, so she didn't have a bill to pay. So even with the paperless people, I think that they need to do something some prompt after they get over certain threshold to help them keep this in mind in order to prevent the things from slipping out of hand. So, I think that would be that, and there's a couple other suggestions. One of the things I mentioned earlier in the chat was that people who can't qualify for care currently because the bill is not in their name, I think the commission and the utility should consider something to the effect that will allow them to participate in those programs.
And the last thing I'd like to offer is I strongly recommend the formation of an ad hoc stakeholders committee comprised of representatives of the IOUs, the state, the CPUC, the LSPs, ACCESS, which is a statewide association of network of energy providers involved in these utility programs, Cal Capital, which is a statewide association of community action agencies in turn, and others, to assist the low income customers by working together to come up with a proactive plan to head off or at least find some way to mitigate the impacts of the impending lift of the moratorium. And the sooner that we can do something together, the sooner we can come up with some solutions that I will help blunt that impact. So those are my comments, and thank you.
Speaker 7
Great. Thank you so much, Val. Thank you so much to all the panelists for your remarks. We just have a few minutes, so I actually want to open it up to the commissioners, for any questions that you might have.
Speaker 16
question. For heating that's been provided not by the IOUs, like propane and other providers. Mhmm. Do Lourdes or Val have any indications whether those service providers are making any efforts to work with their customers,
Speaker 16
the edge of qualifying for LIHEAP but may still need, some assistance and some or some, you know, flexibility with regard to payments to refill their tanks or or other other needs?
Speaker 15
Not to my knowledge. To my knowledge, the the way that the nonregulated utilities work is essentially, in my opinion, a fiefdom. There there are no rules or no regulations that guide how they're done. Talking to other sister agencies who work those populations that are serviced by kerosene, propane, that type. It's up to the individual service provider, meaning the the local utility, how they wanna run it.
I've heard some some are really great to work with. I've heard some horror stories. Even within my county, I have several service providers. Some are easier to work with other. All of them are aware of us, and some of them have actually been working proactively to send their customers to us to ask us about CARES funding when CARES funding was coming into place, if we could help their customers a second time during the year.
Many of them have the customers at heart, and they're really concerned about them, but I'm not aware of any special programs that are being made available to them. And others are equally concerned about their livelihood, and and I think that's a valid concern as well. But I'm not aware of any special programs or extensions of credit that are being offered.
Speaker 13
Hi, this is Lourdes. I would agree with Val. I actually had two people out in the Ridley, Orosi area, which is mostly where they harvest oranges and so forth, they used the propane, AltaGas was the company. The customer service itself to try to find some assistance or programs or any help they could give to the client is zero. I was like, no, they got to pay.
I almost felt like we were being bullied into knowing that she could borrow money or she could find something that she got to pay. There was no leniency or any consideration or even human quality to that conversation. It was very upsetting. And we actually had to do a little fundraise between friends to help that so that they would not be disconnected from their propane.
Speaker 16
Yeah, thank you for that information. That's definitely a gap in our statewide regulatory framework that we don't have the ability to deal with.
Speaker 13
And the other one would be the water. In Parlier, the city of Parlier, not only was the way of paying for it more difficult because a lot of the community members didn't have credit cards or debit cards or bank cards to be able to make that transaction. Some had some people borrow their cards or they went and bought the temporary credit cards, I forgot what they're called, but they would end up losing money to they didn't understand that the card came with an annual fee or something. Don't understand myself. And so that was upsetting because they would lose their money in trying to pay for their water bill.
And in their in Parlier, they're not leaning in at all. I mean, they were disconnected five zero one and if they hadn't already paid. I don't even know how they move so fast, but I guess, I don't know, it's upsetting about those those utilities.
Speaker 15
Yeah. We've also had experience in some other areas where the water bill and the energy bill are tied together. So you could get terminated for one, and it would affect the other. And and that's we've seen that in a number of communities throughout California. Fortunately, I don't have to deal with it in my community.
But there has been a growing concern about that, and there has been some discussion on the federal level of coming up with a water equivalent to, LIHEAP. And there's been some discussion with the water association on at least initial discussion between them and our Community Action Association about the potential, of discussing some type of water LIHEAP type program. And I would encourage the commission to talk to the water folks if if that's appropriate and encourage them to do so because that affects everyone, and particularly the low income people who are marginally employed or unemployed at this time because of the virus. I just like to add one more comment, and that was, Lord, this hit on me really clearly, and that was we are seeing more and more multigenerational families coming to us for help. People who lost their jobs or the the parents or the grandparents, in our case, mostly grandparents, are bringing the younger ones back into the house because they're afraid of the children getting the virus.
And they would rather protect them and suffer through hardship than risk losing family members. And we're seeing that more and more in our community.
Speaker 4
This is Commissioner Rexhup and Val, we are very much focused on those efforts to try to get more assistance to the water customers and the efforts to try to get a LIHEAP type provision into federal law, with other water utilities here and through the National National Wall Association of Regulatory Commissioners Commissioners, excuse me, their efforts to try to influence federal policy in that direction. We don't know how how likely that is, but it's certainly something that's very much on our radar. I had a question for Kathy. If you could you give any more detail on the number of customers who you provide battery assistance with through Verizon?
Speaker 9
There's some background there. There we go. I don't have that data in front of me but I do know that we started the program earlier this year sort of you know before Covid efforts were put together to start a pilot program to start disputing battery power backup devices to customers, but I certainly can get that data to you. It's in the early stages. I know that we're providing support for that and I know that also PGA is piloting a similar program with some LSPs at their level as well.
So I know that through the pilot, we're just trying to gather information because what we have learned is definitely customer education is key so the customer understands how to use the battery, the fact that the battery is really intended for those essential needs to keep their medical devices operational during the shut off events. So just trying to ensure that there's follow-up with customers to make sure that they understand, you know, how to use it, how to charge it.
Speaker 15
If I may add a comment to that, we're participating in that pilot both on the PG and on the state side. We've installed about 75 units into the PG and E pilot project, and we have another 50 units we'll be installing under the state program. I want to thank Kathy and the state, we've expanded the program to also include air purifiers because of the high smoke and all the problems that the folks are having with the air quality being so poor as a result of the fires this summer. We're working with Hoopa Valley Indian tribe at this time. We're going to be doing outreach in this week, installing air purifiers on the homes of folks with COVID and as well as those folks who've been identified as having high risk because of respiratory issues.
So I think I want to again thank Kathy and the state for allowing us to expand the program to include that.
Speaker 4
Thank you, Kathy. It will be great to get follow-up information from you when you're able to take that.
Speaker 13
I just wanted to add something I thought of as we were speaking and looking at the presentations that NEM customers are going to get their bill at the end of the year. Most of the ones that I know of will be getting them this November and December. So I don't know how that is going to be looking if we're looking at that data to come in in some way of how solar clients who are NEM. I still don't understand all that stuff, but how is that bill going to look? You know, because were they relying so much that they were on solar and they don't generate enough energy where to they were at peak hour usage with their irregular IOUs.
So that's going be kind of tremendous to to see how we're going to reach out to those customers.
Speaker 8
Thank you. This has been very extremely helpful. I first want to thank Kathy for level setting us and reminding us that even with our optimization of partnering with CSD, we're only able to meet 6% of the customer need. And I guess for me that reinforces the need to really have a focus on the payment plans and and the partnerships with that we can facilitate between utilities and their customers. And, although LIHEAP is a for sure lifesaver for many folks, It's really critical for us to do what we can within our our jurisdiction.
And that number is actually much smaller than what I recall it. So it's another reality check there. And I'm interested, Val, in your thoughts on what you envision with the ad hoc stakeholder committee. I think one thing that was said by Lulu, which is concerning, is this notion that the utilities are still requiring a down payment for participating in a payment plan, which is no longer allowed. The utilities certainly can try to negotiate that as part of their payment plan.
But if the customer cannot do that, they must still be offered a twelve month payment plan at minimum. Again, before disconnecting, of course, with the moratorium, that's not an option. So there's all these, incidentally, I think this is another reason why we need a very clear citation program because as these rules are evolving, we need to make sure they're all being implemented, uniformly across the utilities. But, you know, is this kind of a situation where maybe an ad hoc committee can trouble you know, you know, be kind of the, area for working through these inconsistencies?
Speaker 15
I would agree so. I I I strongly believe that there's the opportunity here. I know recent discussions, the energy council with CSD, the director, chief director, as well as Kathy, The discussion focused on how do we deal with this? I know there's discussions that are taking place between PG and E and CSD as well as the other IOUs. And the discussions they're having are great, but I think that the third leg of the stool now needs to be part of the discussion, that being the LSPs and other, stakeholders such as TERM who work closely and in order to this, organization who work closely with the target population.
And some of the things that we can learn from that, I think, can be extended out to the larger population and inform the policies and inform how the implementation of the programs take place in communities throughout California. But I think those discussions, it's a timely, situation we find ourselves in, and I think we need to move on it sooner rather than later. Some of the things that we find, you know, can help inform the commission as well. And I think the commission certainly holds a position where you have information that can help us. But I found the report, earlier from the commission's staff was excellent.
Speaker 15
lot of different things that could help us. And I think even though we can serve 6% of the population, we are on the ground. And for years, one of my good friend, Linda Timbers, who's the executive director of Project GO who serves Placer County, talks about the fact that we are essentially working as the credit and collections department extension for the utility companies. And as such, we're dealing with payment plans. We're dealing with payment arrangements.
We're dealing with the customer, we're educating them as to what's taking place and how they need to work with the utility. Don't be afraid to call them, make sure that you can afford the budget. If we're looking at extending a PIP program or something like that, perhaps what we could look at doing is building a pilot project that combines this as the credit and collection arm and helps develop policies or program protocols that would make sense and that would be in the best interest of both the IOUs as well as the customers that we serve. So I think there's that potential there. But I think it won't happen unless we can all sit down and have a discussion.
And and as a good friend of mine says, get work outside the box because there is no box. The only box that exists is the one that we create. So let's just blow that concept up and see where we can go from here.
Speaker 7
Thank you. I think that's a great note to end on. So thank you so much to our panelists Carla, Lourdes, Kathy and Val for your really great insights today, and thank you to Emma Johnson and Masood Fudeh for doing a lot of the data collection and the data analysis for the first presentation that we heard today. We are going to take a two minute stretch break, so if everyone can please reconvene at 11:03. We will have our second panel start at 11:03.
And just a reminder to audience members, if you can please use the Q and A feature if you have any questions as we go forward. Thanks everyone.
Speaker 17
To set the table for what new protections against disconnections customers will have access to as a result of this decision. Broadly speaking, I think of these policies as falling into two buckets, which I'll try to flag as we walk through the policies. The first includes direct customer protections, meaning policies that prevent an IOU from disconnecting a customer who would otherwise be eligible for disconnection. And before this most recent decision, most PUC action in this area had addressed this bucket of protections by creating classes of customers, the utilities cannot disconnect and moratoria on disconnections altogether. The second bucket includes specific assistance to customers to help them afford their new monthly bills, providing discounted service at a baseline level or direct payment assistance.
And this aims to reduce disconnections by minimizing the accumulation of new arrearages due to customers being unable to pay. And that also includes assistance to customers to help pay past due arrearages like through traditional payment plans, and also the new arrearage management plans, which we'll talk about in a moment. So, next slide please. So first up, the decision renewed and expanded a cap on disconnections by utility, territory initially implemented in the previous decision in the disconnections proceeding back in 2018. In that decision, the PUC directed utilities to set a goal of limiting disconnections to no more than their 2017 amount.
This was a 2018 decision, so 2019 was the first year in which the goal was active and all IOUs met that 2019 goal of maintaining twenty seventeen levels. And this is a good example of a direct protection against disconnection, although it is only a goal, so there isn't a direct punishment if utilities miss their goals. The new decision expanded this goal by adding a ratchet mechanism and since IOUs have different starting disconnection rates, the PUC set goals for 2020 through 2024 in which higher disconnection utilities would make sharper cuts to their disconnection rate such that at the end of 2024, each IU would have roughly similar and lower disconnection rates. Due to the COVID protections, the 2020 goal is likely will be met, and even the 2021 goal would likely be met even if disconnections are slightly elevated month over month since the goal is intended to apply to a whole year of disconnections, but utilities will only be able to disconnect customers for eight months at the most. Next slide please.
So another example of a direct customer protection is extreme temperature protections. These were initially implemented in that previous decision as well, but were made permanent in the newest decision. Electric IOUs are not allowed to disconnect customers when temperatures over the next seventy two hours are forecast to exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit or go below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. And gas utilities are similarly restricted when temperatures are forecast to be below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, again over the seventy two hour period. This should prevent customers from being disconnected for non payment when weather conditions would make this especially dangerous.
In addition, the decision implemented new benefit of service procedures when a customer has benefited from past service for which the utility was not paid, utility may require the customer to repay the past due amount but now only according to an actual finding and due process finding. So the decision required utilities to implement a clear set of procedures requiring specific evidence based findings by the utility and affording customers the opportunity to appeal. This includes identifying a specific trigger of information for a benefit of service investigation like common banking information between customers and then customers have thirty days to respond to the utility with any evidence of their own to substantiate that the disputed finding with proof of residing somewhere else during the time charges were accrued. The utility must respond in writing and verbally to the evidence the customer provided within thirty days and provide contact information for the customer affairs branch at the PUC. And utilities are also not allowed to require a customer who is younger than 18 at the time of the charges to pay those charges back.
So as Kathy discussed earlier finally, recent changes to the LIHEAP program, which is kind of straddling both providing customers payments for current bills and allowing them to pay back previous arrearages, there are some new changes from the decision primarily related to development of the new portal system, which will simplify communication between the local service providers, CSD in the state and the utilities themselves. Those are expected to be online in 2021 and utilities are also prohibited from disconnecting a customer while a LIHEAP pledge is pending. Next slide. Another direct customer protection is implemented by the new decision is that utilities may not exceed a 30% disconnection rate in any zip code. Now this is a very high disconnection rate.
Most ZIP Codes that report any disconnections have monthly disconnection rates in the low single digits. Because the cap is based on a percentage of customers in a ZIP Code disconnected rather than a number of disconnections performed in the ZIP code, it is more likely to affect low population ZIP codes where an increase in disconnections would result in a proportionally larger increase in the disconnection rate. In addition, utilities are required to offer twelve month payment plans to all customers prior to disconnection. This is a good example of the second bucket, which gives customers the ability to pay back the amount owed to the utility on a more manageable schedule than paying it back in a shorter period or as one lump sum. The requirement, will hopefully enable customers to become current on payments without being disconnected.
And this is more of a budgeting their bill option for customers rather than a forgiveness program because customers still have to pay back the amount that they owe to the utility. But, importantly, it's not limited to only Care or Ferra customers. All customers have access to these twelve month payment plans. And additionally, utilities are now required to enroll customers whenever they speak to them in any applicable assistance programs they may be eligible such as CARE or FARA to increase participation in those bucket two programs. Utilities are not required to affirmatively establish this of all customers, but when they speak to a customer, they have to make sure that that's the case.
Next slide please. In addition, the decision made some changes to the medical baseline program pursuant to SB1338 from 2018. When customers with eligible conditions are not enrolled in medical baseline, they may incur much higher costs for necessary gas or electric service and IOUs may fail to provide them with services meeting their needs such as advanced notification of PSPS. So this is a bucket two approach to help customers with higher basic demand for energy afforded. There are multiple changes to medical baseline including eligibility for the program that has to be certified by a qualified medical professional.
That definition is expanding as you can see, which should reduce the barrier to accessing the program. Each utility was also directed to develop an online customer facing portal for both eligible customers and medical professionals to verify eligibility that's expected to come online early in 2021 and that should make the process more smooth. And each IOU has also submitted plans to Energy Division for increased outreach and engagement of eligible customers who may not be aware of the program or how to enroll and those are currently under review through the advice letter process, but all utilities are continuing those outreach efforts in the meantime. Next slide please. And finally, as Commissioner Guzman Aceves noted earlier, the PUC ordered IOUs to stop collecting reconnection fees and deposits on a permanent basis.
This essentially makes the COVID protections in this area permanent, another bucket two policy benefiting all residential customers who will not have to pay these charges anymore. This should remove a barrier for customers to be reconnected to service once disconnected and it may free up customers household budgets as well to allow them to stay current on bills rather than paying deposits and fees, etcetera. And lastly, the arrearage management plans which I've mentioned a couple of times here are another new bucket two program coming for all utilities in the next months modeled on the experiences of other states. These plans will allow customers to receive forgiveness for their past due arrearages in exchange for, on time payment of current monthly bills. Eligibility is limited to Care and Fair customers with 500 in arrears, some portion of which is ninety days old and that amount is only $250 for gas only care customers.
Up to $8,000 in total arrearage forgiveness is available, although customers may also reenroll after twelve months waiting period for additional forgiveness. CCA customers are also eligible to participate, but each CCA has to make that determination on its own and notify the relevant IOU. And finally, customers, who missed two payments in a row or three payments at any time non sequentially are removed from the program, but they keep any arrearage forgiveness that they've already received and they can re enroll after a twelve month waiting period. So we're hoping that this program will enable customers that may have, arrearages that otherwise would be very difficult or impossible to pay back to become current on their existing monthly payments and as a result, would get out from under the weight of that past due arrearage. And that is all of the slides that I have.
So I'll pause here for any questions.
Speaker 5
Great. Thank you, Ben. And we're actually gonna go straight into the state panel and then take questions for all together. You really set the stage nicely for the different types of policy options for protecting customers that are out there for California. With this panel, we're going to be hearing from, other states, other utility jurisdictions about their, options and policies protecting utility customers through COVID.
First, we'll hear from Jim Zilneric, Bureau Chief of Public Utilities, Illinois Commerce Commission, along with Leslie and Lesko, the LIHEAP Program Program Manager for Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. We'll then hear from Ohio, Barbara Bossart, who's Chief Reliability and Service Analysis Division for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. And then finally, Teresa Washington will wrap us up for the panel. She is a manager in credit hardship programs and protections with Eversource Energy. So I will now turn it over and to my panelists, remember to turn your video on while you're presenting if you may.
Jim Veneric, you're up.
Speaker 1
Can you hear me, Allison? Great. Good morning, Commissioners, Allison, staff. Thank you for having me here today. I am Jim Zilarick, as Allison said, from the Illinois Commerce Commission.
It's the PUC in Illinois. I'm going to be talking about several programs available to Illinois customers struggling with their bills. My colleague from a sister agency, Leslie Ann, is going to be talking about a couple of those programs, in particular our Percentage of Income Payment Plan program, or PIP. I'll be talking about some of the programs that are under the authority of the Commission starting with if you could proceed to the next slide and the one after that. Next slide after that.
Thanks. Right there. I mentioned the budget payment plans. We have a program required by our rules that utilities offer budget payment plans to customers where basically, you know, they can estimate the cost for the utility service over twelve month period and pay one twelfth of that amount each month so that they levelize their payments. If you're a gas customer, for example, you pay more than more in the summer months than you normally would and then less in the winter months and you get a stable payment, and I mentioned this just because it's a prerequisite to being on our PIP plan that Leslie Ann is going to speak to you about.
Next slide, please. One of the other existing programs to help customers that are behind on their bills is what we call the deferred payment arrangement option or DPAs. Our current rules require DPAs be offered for certain residential customers, and these allow customers basically to build, you know, take their arrearages, divide them by the particular length of the plan, and pay them on top of the regular bill each month to get caught up. Currently, in our rules, customers to enroll in these plans have to pay 25% of the amount past due, and if you're a low income customer, you qualify for a lower 20% down payment. And these EPAs in our current rules go anywhere from four to 12 billing cycles.
Next slide, please. I was going to skip this slide, but I do want to mention one thing. In Illinois, we do have a winter disconnection moratorium, which for most residents for many residential customers means that they can't be shut off between December 1 and March 31. Does not apply to all residential customers, as you can see from reading the text on slide, but effectively, the utilities, the gas and electric utilities rarely shut off customers in that period. So unlike what was discussed earlier by Lourdes, I think many customers in Illinois are very aware of what moratoria are and very familiar with them from these winter moratoria.
So we're in a little different circumstance there, I think, than maybe you are in California. Next slide, please. Just a little background on our response here in Illinois to COVID. In early March, when things started getting bad in terms of the health emergency, the Illinois Commerce Commission issued an order suspending disconnections for nonpayment and imposition of new late fees, and they issued that requirement to be effective until the government ended the emergency declaration, which was an indefinite period. They also asked for utilities to go out and create revised flexible credit and collection practices, and once they issued that order, it triggered staff, consumer advocates, and the utilities to all get together and start talking about, okay, what can be done to help consumers?
And so we came up with a couple of different stipulations to address credit and collection practices and other things and put those before the commission, and on 06/18/2020, the ICC approved these stipulations. The first thing they did was put a finite date on the disconnection moratorium, so it was effectively tied to our reopening in Illinois, basically thirty days past when bars and restaurants started to reopen, utilities would stop, or the disconnection moratorium and non payment for non payment would end, and effectively that was thirty days past June 26 or July 26 is when that moratorium ended for most residential customers. The other next slide, please. The other key credit and collection practices that were changed with the stipulation in the commission's order were that we revised the deferred payment arrangement plans so that, first of all, they could be much longer for residential customers. Now they're anywhere the utilities have to offer anywhere from eighteen months for all residential customers to twenty four months for customers that are low income, and low income includes customers that simply self certify hardship.
So, you know, there's some question about whether, you know, they would be able to certify with our LIHEAP organization to assert their low income status because that was held up, the utilities agreed that they would just simply take a representation from customers that they were facing hardship. The other part of those DPA changes were that down payments were capped at 10% for all residential customers, and again 0% if you express hardship, and there were provisions for repeated DPAs if there was default. The other major program, I think, that came out of our stipulation was a bill payment assistance program, where many of our utilities have uncollectible programs, and those uncollectible programs are tied to customers actually defaulting before essentially write off those accounts as uncollectibles, and of course, during the moratorium, they weren't writing off any uncollectibles, and so what was determined was that they would take some of the money that would normally go to uncollectibles and create a bill payment assistance program, and these were each unique to each of the large utilities. Each filed their own plan, which generally waived from $75 to $500 of customer arrearages. Next slide, please.
So one of the issues we face is that there's sort of a timing concern. The way we designed the plan here in Illinois was that, you know, we'd have a discrete stop for the moratorium on shutoffs, and then folks would ease back into, you know, payments through deferred payment arrangements and other things, so there was a transition built in. Unfortunately, you know, as we all know, the emergency didn't end as quickly as we would have hoped, and so what happened is we had two additional extensions for all residential customers on the disconnection moratorium, and then most recently, the commission reached out and asked the utilities to suspend all the way through March 2021, and utilities agreed to do so, again, for residential customers, but only the LIHEAP qualified customers or those, again, who self certify hardship. So that's in place, and that creates one of the timing issues that I was discussing in terms of a lot of our stipulation was designed to create a transition period, but with customers not being shut off, customers not have not really entered the period where they necessarily need that transition to start, so we're currently continuing to discuss these transition issues.
Next slide, please. Just to briefly touch on it, in our stipulation utilities are required to reach out to customers, not only existing customers, but those who had been disconnected within the last year and notify them of opportunities to reconnect, and they're also supposed to post information on these plans, deferred payment arrangements, and so on their website, and they've done so. Next page. Thank you. As far as program stacking, in Illinois, most of our programs are designed to be stacked with the exception of PIP and Wahi PIP, as Leslie Ann will talk about.
PIP customers must also participate in budget billing, that's why I mentioned it earlier, but our deferred payment arrangements and our bill payment assistance programs were both designed to be on top of the other assistance, so it was envisioned that a customer who qualified for LIHEAP would not only get LIHEAP, but could also, if they qualify, get bill payment assistance as well, so those were designed to be staffed. Next slide, please. I included a little bit of information here just so you can see our trends and disconnects or deferred payment arrangements. As you'll see, I don't think the data is all that informative because what we found out is by and large, none of the utilities disconnected any residential customers, only our two largest electric customers actually started disconnecting in September, mid September, none of the others had disconnected through September, and there were a few disconnection notices that went out earlier, but again, there was really no threat of shutoff for many of these customers, and you'll see that reflected in many of the early numbers. We didn't see market increase in deferred payment arrangements until, if you look at the two, Ameren and ComEd, we did see a marked upturn when they actually started disconnecting customers.
Next page, and we had the bill payment assistance program, but that even though there have been quite a few disbursements, those disbursements have been very recent, so we're not even seeing them reflected in the data. Our utilities are required to file data on disconnections, late payment charges, DPAs entered in disbursements, those type of things monthly, and you know, for the first several months, I think first five months of the plan, you know, none of the data was really all that useful because not much was happening. We're just starting to see an uptick, and we will only get our September numbers in three days. So, we're looking forward to those because we're now starting to see a period where the numbers are actually starting to show something. I'll stop there and let Leslie Ann talk about our PIP program.
Thanks.
Speaker 12
Hi, thanks Jim. So I'm from the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunities. I believe that in California, Kathy Andree, we are, you know, we're sort of counterparts in different states. Next slide please. As Jim mentioned, there is no stacking of PIP and LIHEAP in Illinois.
It is available to residential customers and they have an option to choose between PIP and LIHEAP and it's always based on funding availability at the county and utility level. We have our five regulated utilities, they are the ones who participate in the PIP, we communicate with them electronically, whereas the other vendors throughout the state are non communicating and probably non regulated also and so we just use the top five. So LIHEAP is a lot more available. Next slide please. Enrollment trends, if you'll see where it says 06/30/2020 that was at the end of our last program year.
We had 87% of our customers received regular LIHEAP benefits and then we had 13 sorry, 13% of of, our population was enrolled in the year round PIP program. Right now looking down at the November 9 date, we're projected if we kept on this same enrollment trend we would have 81% LIHEAP and 19% PIP, but LIHEAP just has so much more money that we anticipate by the June we'll have about 95% LIHEAP and 5% PIP. We are already in meetings with stakeholders to discuss more money in the PIP fund and so we hope that by the 2021, there's a little typo there, it
Speaker 12
sixthirtytwenty twenty one that we would have even more than 13% enrollment, so we'll see how that goes. Next slide please. So the funding for the PIP in Illinois is based on rate payer charges that the utilities collect and then they deposit them into a fund. If you wanted to look at Public Act 96,003 you could probably Google that and get more information. Next slide please.
So the customer eligibility is at 150% of the federal poverty level and below as there are the top five utilities that are in the PIP program and as Jim said, the customer must be enrolled in budget billing, that's a prerequisite. Next slide please. So the state benefit for each customer, it could be a monthly benefit up to $150 If they're a gas and electric customer they would get up to $100 a month for the gas and up to $50 for the electric and I don't have it on this slide but it should say that the customer's requirement is to pay 6% of their monthly household gross income. So there's a calculation that's done and I could explain that more but it's kind of complicated. Next slide please.
There is an arrearage reduction program, we call it ARP, it's part of the program and it's administered by the utilities. What happens when a customer first signs up, their balance is set aside and that's called a pre program arrearage. The ARP benefit is up to $1,000 a year per utility, but the customers are required to make on time, in full payments of their customer payment requirement, and if they do that then for each month they're on time and paid in full they get onetwelve of their arrearage is disregarded, it's set aside and so that's a benefit for the customer also. Next slide please. Expenditures and assistance levels, the total amount so far this year we've spent on PIP is $28,700,000 for 28,480 households.
The average PIP benefit amount last program year was 1,007 and we're pretty close to that right now. PIP also helps lower household energy burden for families with lowest income. Go to the next slide please. That's, you know, with our federal ID for looking more at energy burden and so we're trying to compare our state funded PIP in the same regard and this is helping us actually, so you can look at this later and if you have questions I'll try to answer them but I'm not the energy burden expert. Next please.
So changes that we made in Illinois to the PIP program because of the pandemic, There are features that are sort of like collection activities, our local administering agencies, they do case management for the customers and there's a recertification, there's a missed payment clock that gives customers opportunities to miss payments and make them up, and so we suspended those activities because most of the agencies were not seeing customers in person and everybody was confused, so that was one thing we did. Also, we started our new PIP season earlier. It started July 27 instead of October 1. We are also extending the length of time that customers can apply for PIP to March 31 instead of December 31. Normally we have a priority period enrollment but this year since we started in July we just wanted everyone to be able to apply, households that maybe are newly unemployed or underemployed and so far that seems to be going pretty well.
Next slide please. So thank you and there's our contact information.
Speaker 5
to go right along because we're running behind to our next speaker is Barbara Bosworth with Public Utilities Commissioner of Ohio.
Speaker 2
Thank you for having me. As she said, I'm Barb Bossart and I'm with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio and I'm the Chief of the Reliability and Service Analysis Division and we oversee oversee the enforcement of the deposit and disconnection rules and the low income program. Next slide please. So, I divided my presentation into three specific questions. First one is what has Ohio done to protect utility customers?
So, the Commission took action through its 03/12/2020 order and it asked the utility companies to consider ways to keep service on regardless of the customer's payment status and the utility companies did respond and they stopped disconnection while they reviewed their policies to help reduce the economic impact on customers. Many companies also waived reconnection fees to restore service to those that had already previously been disconnected. They also, some waived late payment fees and credit card payment fees. The commission then later required the large gas and electric utilities to file transition plans prior to resuming disconnections for non payment. These plans need to be filed at least forty five days prior to resumption of disconnection.
Next slide please. Ohio Administrative Code rules, we do have a requirement that gas and electric companies do offer extended payment plans to customers in threat of disconnection. So first they need to offer a mutually agreeable payment plan, but if one cannot be accepted then they are required year round to offer a onesix plan, a onenine plan, or the percentage of income payment plan, which I'll discuss in the next slide. They all are required to offer the budget plans, so customers who are not in arrears can, join a budget plan, which is a 12 program. The commission every year before its winter heating season, starts in November, offers a water reconnection order which requires that utilities accept a payment of $175 to prevent or maintain service and then the customers to be enrolled into one of the extended payment plans.
I know you may not have a winner order but I think this could be utilized at any time of the year, depending on the company. Also, do want to mention that utility companies do, offer assistance to shareholder and customer contribution, funds. During the pandemic, many of the companies had increased the eligibility requirements in the dollar amount, to assist more customers. Next slide please. And so I just wanted to give distinction between our onesix plan and our onenine plan.
Our onesix plan requires six equal payments on the past due balance in addition to the full payment of the current bill, but the onenine plan is a little different. It requires nine equal monthly payments on the past due balance in addition to a budget payment plan. This is hopefully that the customers will get used to the levelized bill and continue on to a budget plan. Also, the utilities with their transition plans, they did were encouraged to offer flexible payment arrangements and also many of them offered a onetwelve payment plan in addition to the required payment plans. They also offer to work with commercial customers on payment plans.
Next slide please. So our PIP plus program, here are the qualifications, I'm not going to read them all to you but it is for customers at or below 150% of the poverty level for at least the last three months, and there are other eligibilities such as applying for weatherization programs. Next slide please. Trying to get done in ten minutes. The benefits are if you heat with gas you would pay 6% of your monthly household income for gas and 6% of the monthly household income for electric or 10%, whichever is less.
For households that heat with electricity, you would just pay 10% of your monthly household income or $10 whichever is less. In order to incentivize customers to pay on time and in full because we want customers to get used to paying bills monthly and it helps the cash flow to utilities. We have incentives, so if you pay on time and in full, the remaining balance of your current utility bill would be credited and also if you came in with an arrearage, onetwenty fourth credit for accumulated arrearage would be credited as well. Next slide please. And we really stressed customer outreach during this transition period, so the PUCO, of course, we provide education through our website, our social media, call center and speaking engagements.
I've
Speaker 2
a link to our website where we have the utility restart plans, so each company filed their own transition plan to say what they were going to do as part of the transition prior to disconnection, so that might be a useful site for you. Through the commission orders approving out those transition plans, the commission did encourage each utility company to offer those flexible payment plans and to provide outreach to customers and many of them do. They have a webpage dedicated to COVID-nineteen issues. They also issued press release and they used their social media as well. Next slide please.
And so another question that I was asked was what are the possible impacts of lifting the consumer protections and what mitigation measures are in place. The companies through the transition plans started resumption of disconnections. Natural gas companies started mainly in August and electrics resumed in September per their approved plans. So, we did expect that there would be an increase of calls to our call center and, to the utility's call center, So, if a company requested a waiver of our call response time requirements in our rules and notification to the commission if they cannot meet those standards, The commission did waive those requirements and then we just prepared our call center staff and all of our staff with the knowledge they needed to help customers find assistance out there and know what plans are available to them. Also, we assumed that there was going to be customers who have never needed assistance before that were going to need assistance and not know where to find it, so again outreach efforts with different agencies and with our utilities was very key to that.
Next slide please. Also, we thought there would be I will say with the call center, I wanted to say that we did just check our numbers. We did not get the increase in call volume that we thought we would get in August and September. It may be because companies were slow to move back into its disconnections or it could be our outreach that did a wonderful job. We're still reviewing all of our data still.
So we also expected an increase in disconnections and again this is pretty early since the company has just started disconnections. Just as a quick glance, it looks like our numbers are lower than they were for, last year, but we will continue to monitor those, activities and any directives that we get from the Governor's office, I'm sure the commission will take action if needed. Also, we do have medical certificates that customers can use if there is an illness or a medical issue in the household. It delays disconnection for thirty days and it could be used up to three times in a twelve month period. Also, we did see that there'd be some increased activity at the community action agencies as they process our applications for PIP and HEAT funds.
So the commission did, suspend for a period of time the reverification requirements, to be on PIP program where you have to reverify annually your income and also the requirement at the anniversary date where you have to be current on your twelve month installment plan and so that was waived for a time period as well. And next slide please. So what are the economic impacts regarding these consumer protection programs? So immediately we don't believe that the rate payers will see, an impact due to the regulatory lag, but we do expect that there could possibly be impacts on the uncollectible riders, decoupling riders, or an increase in request for deferral recovery due to COVID expenses. The immediate impact on utilities would be cash flow decrease, a loss of sales and some COVID related expenses.
Next slide please. So to help manage these impacts, again outreach was a key because we do know there is available funds through the CARES Act that governments, cities, and counties have received. We want to make sure that those funds are distributed to customers that need them and customers know where to find them. Again, the commission wants to make sure that the utilities are also tracking cost savings along with expenses if they are going to seek recovery for any deferrals. And, again, increase, with the flexible payment arrangements to help customers maintain service, to get through this pandemic to help, decrease any, impact on the uncollectible rider.
So, that's the end of my presentation, hopefully I can answer any questions for you later. Thank you.
Speaker 5
Wonderful, thank you Barbara, and yeah, we'll take questions for all the panelists at the end of the series and Theresa will wrap us up with your presentation.
Speaker 10
Thank you, Allison, and thank you to the staff at the California Public Utilities Commission for inviting me to speak today. My name is Theresa Washington. I'm the manager of credit hardship programs and protections here at Eversource Energy. And I'm gonna be sharing with everybody about our arrears management programs. We do have programs that are available that help customers reduce those past due balances.
It's a real win win for everyone. And because especially important right now is that our customers are facing these challenges they've never seen before due to the pandemic. Next slide. And I know with the interest of time, I'll certainly just share quickly, of course with Eversource Energy, we are covering three states between Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire for gas, electric and water utilities with over 4,000,000 customers. Next slide.
Thank you. I'll be discussing the importance of our utilities offering programs that help low income customers, what tools do we have as a utility in our toolbox, provide a deeper look into our arrears management programs, and then finally share with you about Eversource's response to the pandemic and how we are or plan on returning to business as usual. Next slide. So why should the utilities offer these programs that help low income customers? We know it's a trifecta of benefits that start with operational benefits.
The last thing we wanna do is disconnect service to customers By offering these programs that help low income customers maintain service and pay down those past due balances, we can avoid field visits by our technician. There are societal benefits, right? We're keeping the balances low, helps customers by reducing any costs that are borne by all rate payers. And then there's customer benefits. But I'll go into the customer benefits in just a few slides.
Next please. So, what are the tools in our toolbox? Right, two of our three states currently offer an arrears management program, which are programs offered to the low income customers that helps reduce, even eliminate past due balances. We have discount utility rates. So, customers who are receiving public assistance, they're eligible for a discounted utility rate and we have those available in Massachusetts and in New Hampshire.
Payment arrangements. We've always offered payment arrangements to our customers in which customers can spread payments over maybe a six month period of time. Due to COVID, those have expanded to twelve months for our Massachusetts, New Hampshire area and in Connecticut up to twenty four months. We have deposit rules under normal course of business, of course, deposits are billed at the time of connect or collected upon reconnect. Now the deposits are held usually for a specified period of time.
We have energy efficiency programs that customers who are eligible can receive home energy assessments at no cost to them. We send an energy specialist, they can assess the home's needs, install energy savings products. The goal is really to reduce that energy bills through these programs. We also offer budget building which customers can pay their average bill over a twelve month period. It really levelizes payments for customers and gives customers peace of mind with fixed monthly payments.
I've covered some of the tools that we have in the toolbox and now I'll go into our arrears management program. Next slide. So these are essentially programs. They're really designed to help reduce even eliminate those past due balances with forgiveness credits given the customers with consistent payments. Residential customers that are receiving benefits such as with WIC, food stamps, their income may fall at or below the 60% of the state medium income, which is something that Connecticut and Massachusetts use at the state medium income level.
They're eligible for our programs and by participating customers are avoiding disconnection of service and they gain a fresh start as they reduce those past due balances. Next slide. So you've actually heard me already speak to some of the benefits of those programs as it promotes and enables consistent payment while customers are enrolled, their service is protected and the customers gain a fresh start by reducing their past due balance through the forgiveness credits and monthly payments. Our arrears management program here at Eversource is called New Start. We have just over 19,000 customers in Connecticut and Massachusetts that are enrolled right now in the program.
And we're in the process of expanding that to our New Hampshire base. Next slide. The last topic I'll cover is really our company's response to the pandemic. Back in March when we started learning more and more about the pandemic, we took action to suspend the determination notices and shut offs across all three states. We simplified our enrollment into our new start program.
So if customers fell off the program because of missed payments, they could easily re enroll no upfront payment requirement. The arrears management programs really have always been for residential customers, but we did introduce a small business arrears management program or forgiveness program, where business customers, if they participate in the payment arrangements that they have and upon their first payment into our small business program, their April utility bill would be credited. So we really think that's a great tool to expand the forgiveness programs to not only residential customers, but giving opportunity for our business customers to participate. And lastly, we applied security deposits up to $20,000,000 in security deposits that we applied back to our business and residential customers that had past due arrears balances. So we helped to reduce it.
So there were security deposits that we already had on hand and customers in need, we were able to apply those to those arrears balances. Next slide. So I've touched upon the work that Eversource has done to reduce the balances through our programs, extended payment plans and the security deposit application back to the past due balances. But there is a time that's going to come where the company is resuming a normal course of business to the best of our ability and with the utmost care for how this impacts our customers. So New Hampshire was the first of our service territories to resume disconnect notices and shut off action.
But we relied on our strong relationships with the key stakeholders such as the Office of Consumer Council, the Public Utility Commission there, social agencies and community based organizations to really work together to develop a plan on how to resume collections and begin shut off if needed. We were able to have these discussions because we built awareness around actions that were taken and the programs offered. Customers received monthly communications through various messages. We did text, email, letters, live outbound calling, press releases. We put information upfront on our IVR system to directly tell all customers about the payment plans that we have.
So communicating, communicating and communicating about programs and services available was really key. We expanded our outreach by holding webinars for our business customers and our residential customers. We even did webinars for our fuel agencies. So we wanted to share what the utilities were doing, what programs we had available. And Eversource is navigating really in uncharted waters like many of the other utilities are, everything that I'm hearing today, we kind of are in the same boat.
I believe that using those tools in our toolbox and providing customers with programs that can ease that financial burden, customers may feel right now, it's going to help us get through.
Speaker 5
All right, thank you so much, Theresa. And I want to thank again all of our panelists, Ben and then Jim, Zamerica, and Ann Linkl, Barbara Lawson and Theresa Washington. We're going to turn it over to the commissioners to ask questions. Before I as I do that, I just want to also thank Sheila Funk, who did all the upfront research in order to understand what the variety and diversity of the tools in the toolbox or policies to protect the customers are that these different jurisdictions bring. So thanks again, Chela for your efforts getting us to this point.
So commissioners, feel free to just unmute yourself.
Speaker 4
This is Commissioner Rexhaven. Barbara, I have a question for you. The you said that since you resumed disconnections, since you yes. Since you resumed disconnections, the rate has been lower than last year?
Speaker 2
Just we're still, like, reviewing our data. It comes in a little behind. So since they just gas just started in August and September, started or electric started in September, it does look like it's still lower than it was in previous years, but, you know, we're not sure if that's just ramping up from the utility companies and or is it because they are offering flexible payment plans, as customers finding the assistance that they need.
Speaker 4
Well, that was my question. What do you attribute that to and do you expect it to last? You Yeah, I'm
Speaker 8
Barbara, I also had a question for you and I wonder if maybe I just misunderstood, but on the PIP program, and by the way, every time we've been looking into PIP programs, everyone always references Ohio. So sounds like you have a good reputation there, but is did I understand correctly that it's a $10 a month pretty much set or lower based on potential?
Speaker 2
No, it's 6% of your income, monthly income or $10 whichever is less. So if you have zero monthly income, you would have to at least pay $10 but otherwise it's 6% of your household monthly income. I should note that we did just have a rule making proceeding and the Commission did agree to a 5% but it's still going through the rule making process, so I just want to note that.
Speaker 8
Oh, okay, because it says whichever is less, so does that mean the most it could be is $10 or whichever is more?
Speaker 2
I just looked at those numbers, one moment, I have those here. So, through, I could give you twenty nineteen numbers for the total for all of our investor owned electric customers is about $220,000
Speaker 2
I'm so sorry, that's not correct. That was just one company. I was like, that's not right. Sorry about that. It's about roughly 120.
On the gas side? Yes. Okay.
Speaker 8
And in general, are these customers that are participating in the PIP, do they fit a certain demographic in terms of anything? Are they typically older or is it mostly just the income driven?
Speaker 2
I will say I'm expert, it is, so I don't know if we know the demographics, like I said, we do know it's 150% of the poverty level and I do believe we do have like statistics of the population, percentage which each bucket the customer falls in if they're closer to 150% or if they're 75% of the poverty level, but I'm not sure that we have an age, a demographic age range. But I will ask our PIPF expert on that and provide that information to you. Thank you.
Speaker 8
And I'm trying to see if anyone else has questions, but I do have another question for Teresa. And one of the things Teresa you mentioned and I think a few of your colleagues here about just some of the basic things having the IOUs like yourself, you mentioned that you are putting things on your website, having and by the way, I think the small business AMP kind of so two questions for you. One is, can you talk a little bit about how you got approval for some of your COVID responses? Was there a settlement process? I know in a previous conversation, in talking to Jim, he discussed this kind of master settlement that came together in Illinois.
Was there some process that allowed you to move quickly as an example to establish a small business arrearage forgiveness? Maybe I'll just stop with that question.
Speaker 10
Thank you so much, Commissioner. That is a great question. In Massachusetts, that's where we were able to launch a small business, a rare forgiveness program. It did go through an approval process. So it went through the DPUC out in Massachusetts and we proposed it earlier in the season when the shutoff protections they began.
And it did take a little while through discussions and we had to wait for approval to launch that. We have proposed it here in Connecticut. However, we haven't received approval to move forward yet. So right now, that is a program that's available to our Massachusetts business customers. But absolutely, we did have to go through an approval process with the commission.
Speaker 8
Thank you. And many of these are just sounds like you as a company have put these concepts together and requested them. Have any of them come about any sort of different way?
Speaker 10
So as far as the applying security deposit back to customers, that is something
Speaker 10
and received approval to do through the authority. When it came to the twenty four month payment plan, and please note that I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, there is no down payment requirement for our twenty four month extended payment plan. It's available to all customers, residential and commercial. That did come forth at the request of the commission. So it wasn't where we created that idea and delivered it.
But yes, absolutely that was through the commission offering that extension of a payment plan. But we did proactively indicate that with our new start or our arrears management program, customers that fell off, we were waiving those reenrollment any cost because typically we would ask customers that fell off the program to make up whatever missed payments they had. Under the circumstances, we are allowing certainly if the customer is qualified, they need to get back on the programs, there's no cost for them to do so.
Speaker 8
And one short follow-up. Is the twenty four months payment plan with no down payment, is that a limited time plan? How long is that?
Speaker 10
So that was originally being offered here in Connecticut through November 1, which was in line with the end of the shutoff moratorium, which was October 31 here in Connecticut, and we have a winter moratorium period that began November 1. We did receive about two weeks ago or so approval from the commission or request to extend that through 02/09/2021 or until the governor lifts maybe the state of emergency. So it has been extended through that period of time.
Speaker 11
This is John Reeves. No questions. It's really my appreciation and thanks for the workshop today. Learned a lot, and I think that communication is really key in keeping customers informed of what is available to them and then what they need to plan for as we head to 2021. And I know there's work ahead for us on evaluating, PIP options and future proceedings.
The information today was very helpful. So thank you to all.
Speaker 5
Okay, well we'll wait to see if other commissioners have any other questions or comments. I'm gonna do a quick round of the panelists with a question I have. And that's, you know, you've been hearing about what our picture here in California today as far as the options policies already in place and then the customers and our data, what it's showing regarding customer impact from COVID. And I wanted to ask if if you had as representatives or, you know, personally, whether representing your state or not, But what you would say the policies that California should potentially or actions that we should potentially consider, given what you know as far as your offerings in your state and what you've seen that we at California are currently offering?
Speaker 10
So, Allison, I'll start with these questions. And hearing today just the messages from what California is doing, even the other utilities, I think offering that we all have some sort of form of an arrears management program. I do think it did help where customers were able to use that security deposit that we were holding and under normal circumstances, we would have applied those security deposits back after some consistent payment behavior, just by under the normal regulations that we have by state. But helping those customers to get that relief that, you know, we were getting some calls from customers to say, I have a security deposit that you're holding. Can you apply that to my past due balance?
And being able to do that and help those customers who, you know, they were feeling anxious, how am I gonna, you know, pay this bill? I don't have the money upfront. So the ability to use those dollars towards the past due balances, I think was beneficial and maybe it can be adopted by other utilities. But I think that would be one. Thank you.
Speaker 1
This is Jim We've from run into a few glitches in terms of implementation that you might want to be aware of. We have a crisis assistance fund which provides a little more than regular Waihi to customers, particularly customers that are going to be imminently disconnected, they have a disconnection notice that's, you know, within seven days or they have been disconnected, that provides them more funding. What we found out is that in some cases, customers were calling the utilities and utilities were putting them on deferred payment arrangement, but come to find out, given a deferred payment arrangement, you're considered not subject to imminent disconnection, so they were losing that crisis funding. So we're struggling with those kind of things. And related to that is when we were discussing with stakeholders, you know, how utilities would correspond with customers, there was a lot of desire for having sort of scripted language, you know, make sure that you say here are the deferred payment arrangements, and so you say it this way and that kind of thing, and what we're finding out a little bit anyway is that something like this was not foreseen.
So the fact that we don't have an entirely scripted is probably good because now the consumer customer service agents can kind of discuss this option and say, well, you might want to get your crisis assistance first and then enroll in a DPA. That wasn't in the script that was originally proposed, so just be aware of those implementation issues and be a little bit flexible, I think, because that can be important.
Speaker 2
Thanks. I know we did find out many of our utilities continue to send the disconnection notices even though they weren't disconnected, but they put notes on there just due to the programming, but also because many customers needed to provide a disconnection notice to get assistance. Sometimes it was a requirement, so it was something that they would need, so I'm not sure if that's the same in California or not, but again, I think trying to help those customers find out where those funds are available to help them reduce their balance down and keep their service on as well as, you know, getting cash flow so it doesn't ultimately impact all ratepayers to help limit that impact.
Speaker 5
Wonderful, thank you. And before I, I'm just checking the Q and A box here, but any other questions from even panellists with each other or the commissioner? We have a few minutes left.
Speaker 8
Sure. I guess a question for Jim and Barbara and Leslie Anne too, if you know, are your 24 it sounded like maybe Illinois' '24 payment plan option was a continuous one. It's not a COVID response limited one. Is that correct?
Speaker 1
No. That actually is a response to COVID. Our previous we had a requirement for payment plans that would be anywhere from four to twelve months, and then the COVID package extended that to eighteen and twenty four if you were, you know, hardship customer, so that's a COVID specific increase in in existing plans.
Speaker 2
No. We do not make a requirement to increase what we already had in our rules, which were up to the one ninth plan, but most of the companies did offer a one twelfth plan or they would work with customers and depending on the customer's need and their rear edge, they would offer a onetwenty four, but it was not mandated by the commission.
Speaker 4
I was going to ask a question about the small business arrearage program that Teresa was talking about. Does either Illinois or Ohio have something like that? Are you aware of other states that have started on that kind of program?
Speaker 1
Yeah, this is Jim from Illinois. Part of our negotiated agreement was this plan for small businesses, commercial and industrial customers. It was not as generous as for residential customers. For example, I think you could get a deferred payment arrangement for up to three months with 33% down or up to six months with 50% down, and that was extended through 08/26/2020 to business customers. And I should note in response to Commissioner Asadeh's previous question that DPAs, the deferred payment arrangements for up to eighteen to twenty four months are going to be offered only through December 26 right now, although there's discussion of, you know, the continuing crisis extending all of these things.
Those are ongoing discussions.
Speaker 2
Again, the commission did not mandate it. It would have to be if the company offered it into their transition plans and off the top of my head I think there was only one company, but I know that they were going to work with them but I'm not aware of any arrearage crediting for small commercial. I would have to review that, all their transition plans again, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5
Okay. Well, think we can move to wrapping up and I'll pass to the the commissioners if you have any wrap up statements before I close out the meeting.
Speaker 8
Sure. Thank you very much. I just, very appreciative, particularly from the other states taking the time to share your creativity and your partnership with your customers and your utilities, and of course, from all the local groups that we heard from in California, including our sister agency, CSD. I found a lot of your comments extremely helpful, even just as commissioner mentioned, the importance of communication and clarity and transparency. I think we all heard the call for an ad hoc committee and we will take that back to think through.
As well as many other recommendations here. I thank you and again I want to thank the staff and energy division and PAO for helping put this together.
Speaker 16
And this is commissioner Randolph. I just want to thank everyone for their participation and also just highlight, the importance of community based organizations in helping customers understand what's going on and what their options are. So I really wanna encourage that continued coordination and the extent an ad hoc committee can help improve that. I think that would be really beneficial.
Speaker 4
This is Commissioner Rechhoff and I echo what my colleague said. I think this is gonna be a very, very important time in the next few months and when our, when some of the protections we put in place go away. So we really need to get the continued input of the advocacy groups. I want to thank the folks from our colleagues from Ohio and Illinois, not just for participating today, but for helping to pioneer some of these programs that we're now relying on. It's nice to not just not to be the leader in everything, and to be able to borrow from some of the great consumer protection work that others have done.
Speaker 5
Wonderful, thank you. And just a final close wrap up, I want to remind our audience we have been monitoring the Q and A box and responding to questions there. Those are the questions that we didn't have a chance to respond to. We've noted your questions. Audience can continue to submit any comments to the email address shown on the slide, covidresponsectc.
Ca dot gov, by December 4. It may be that some of your comments or questions are actually parts of what we're considering here today, so we may not have a direct answer, but rather injust that it's a question as far as what action could we consider the commission to, to take to address the impact that customers are facing, and energy customers in particular from COVID. So thank you everybody, and, I hope you enjoy getting off nine minutes earlier than you expected to a lunch break.
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