What is Rate Design?
You might be surprised to learn GMP has more than ten different rate categories – for all different types of customers and how they use energy. For example, there are residential customers, commercial customers, industrial customers, and even customers who pay for street lighting.
State regulators are reviewing GMP’s proposal for how to divide these costs among all those different rate classes in a process called rate design.
How will rate design affect you? Rate design does not change the total amount of money collected from customers overall. Instead, GMP’s proposed plan provides recommendations about how it will divide costs across rate classes or customer types to ensure it is more accurately charging for and recovering the costs to provide service to each group of customers.
Here’s a chart outlining GMP’s suggested changes that the Public Utilities Commission is reviewing:
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If you’d like to learn more about this process, you have a chance to hear from GMP and talk to state regulators on October 10th. That’s when the Public Utilities Commission holds a hearing on GMP’s new rate design plan. The hearing is at 7:00 p.m., at the Rutland Free Library, 10 Court Street. The Vermont Department of Public Service will host a public information session on the rate design proposal right before the PUC hearing, starting at 6:30 p.m. You can follow this case and review materials and see the schedule for the case at the PUC’s website by searching for Case No. 18-2850-TF at http://puc.vermont.gov/epuc-information/case-and-document-search. GMP also has filings here: https://greenmountainpower.com/regulatory/filings. And, comments can be submitted online at any time at http://puc.vermont.gov/epuc-information/make-filing or by email to [email protected] or by writing to the Clerk of the Commission at the Public Utility Commission, 112 State St., Montpelier, VT 05620-2701.