(C) Daily Montanan This story was originally published by Daily Montanan and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Montana Public Service Commission: NorthWestern 'undermining' regulators • Daily Montanan [1] ['Keila Szpaller', 'More From Author', '- March'] Date: 2024-03-26 NorthWestern Energy is undermining the Montana Public Service Commission’s statutory obligation to investigate the monopoly’s ability to provide power to customers by withholding information from the agency, according to PSC staff and its president. “For NorthWestern Energy to decline to provide this commission information when requested is concerning and frankly problematic,” said PSC President James Brown at a meeting Tuesday. Brown made his comments at a meeting where the all-Republican Public Service Commission voted 4-1 to approve a review of NorthWestern’s long-term energy plan, a version less critical than an analysis drafted by agency staff. The utility has been in the spotlight recently because, with approval from regulators, it has significantly raised rates on residents and small businesses. Last year, it proposed a settlement that would have increased residential rates 28% in a little more than one year; the commission approved the settlement, and a separate adjustment trimmed the hike to 24%. NorthWestern is also building a controversial $310 million natural-gas-fired plant even as more and more consumers call for clean energy sources. The meeting Tuesday was to consider NorthWestern’s plan for how it will supply energy to customers during the long term. The elected commissioners regulate monopoly utilities in the state, and the law gives them authority to “identify deficiencies” in such plans, submitted every three years. However, the staff memo and an agency rate analyst said the law requires the plan to “fully explain, justify and document data, assumptions, methodologies, (and) models,” and the plan the company submitted had omitted information. For example, it didn’t explain “the method used to estimate customer bill impacts” for one of the energy resource scenarios it discussed. Staff said the company provided reasonable responses to additional questions, for the most part, but the information should have been included in the first place. “That commenters had to identify the issues and commission staff had to seek clarification after the plan had been submitted illustrates the degree to which the 2023 plan lacks transparency and consideration for the regulatory process,” said the draft memo from staff. At the meeting, Public Service Commission rate analyst Haylee Gobert said the company also didn’t respond at all to a request about its current energy capacity, “which is disappointing at best, and at worst, validates the concerns expressed by some stakeholders that NorthWestern is not serious about engaging in transparent objective resource planning.” Although the Public Service Commission president criticized NorthWestern, a group focused on the energy future said the revised memo that commissioners adopted also watered down critiques that regulators should provide to the behemoth utility so it can improve. “The updates serve to, at most, give Northwestern Energy a slap on the wrist, while the staff’s original findings were that the 2023 plan (is) … ‘less transparent, accessible and analytically rigorous’ than Montana’s planning statutes require,” said Nick Fitzmaurice with the Montana Environmental Information Center, citing the staff memo. Commissioner Jennifer Fielder proposed the revised memo, which kept a summary of criticisms from groups that had commented on the plan, but replaced a detailed analysis and critique from Public Service Commission staff. Fielder said her revision “enhances clarity” and “removes repetition,” and the commissioners have every right to make the change. Her memo also requested a “more substantive” action plan for implementing goals. “It is fully within our purview to put things in our own words, and that’s really what this amendment does using much of the staff’s work,” Fielder said. Her memo inserted a paragraph about NorthWestern’s “corporate commitment” to being carbon neutral by 2050. It said the commission is “concerned that the 2023 plan does not evaluate the feasibility of its corporate commitment in terms of its obligation to serve its customers in the most cost-effective manner.” As such, it states that NorthWestern should “provide capacity expansion results without a Net Zero constraint so that any potential customer savings or costs from its Net Zero commitment are transparent.” Fielder said her memo maintains a “critical analysis,” but Fitzmaurice highlighted for commissioners many of the paragraphs Fielder’s memo eliminated. For example, in Fielder’s draft, which was approved, commissioners do not refer to “deficiencies” in reference to NorthWestern’s plan, as regulatory staff had recommended. “The fact that ‘deficiencies’ was eliminated in a number of places is curious,” said Fitzmaurice, who requested a version of the documents that tracked the changes in a transparent way. He said the memo Fielder proposed also undermined stakeholder engagement and transparency through the process. Commissioner Annie Bukacek was the sole commissioner to vote against Fielder’s memo, and she said she did not support either draft. Bukacek said she studied the law and the material NorthWestern submitted, and she believes the company provided all of the information that’s necessary to enable the commission to perform its duties. “Requiring unnecessary information raises the price of doing business,” Bukacek said. She also said the additional information requested in Fielder’s memo and in the staff memo were made by people who have experience in the field, but the details would only serve to confuse the rest of the public. “Adding the requested information would make the document in my opinion less transparent to the extent it would be less understandable to Montanans,” Bukacek said. Brown said he would politely push back on Bukacek’s statements against requesting additional information. He said the PSC is statutorily required to engage in the process, and the agency as a whole and individual commissioners have an obligation to review the “planning horizon” and ensure NorthWestern can meet customer demands. Although he disagreed with NorthWestern’s withholding information, he said he believed Fielder’s memo satisfied the commission’s responsibility to regulate and investigate utilities. “Even so, I believe that by having the commission issue the comments that I will thank Vice President Fielder for working so hard on, we will have met our statutory obligations to inform NorthWestern of the concerns that we may have,” Brown said. The memo to NorthWestern concludes the process from a regulation standpoint, according to Public Service Commission Executive Director David Sanders. Sanders said NorthWestern isn’t required to respond to the comments. “We hope they will use those comments as guidance going forward,” said Sanders, executive director, after the meeting. [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2024/03/26/montana-public-service-commission-northwestern-undermining-regulators/ Published and (C) by Daily Montanan Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/montanan/