May 27, 2009

Environment Northeast (ENE) is putting its support behind a decoupling request filed by Southern Connecticut Natural Gas (SCNG) with the Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC).  The decoupling should be modified in some respects to more accurately reflect the impact of changes in sales volumes on revenues and to cover all of the firm rate classes, added ENE.

          The process proposed by SCNG for determining the actual revenue impacts is to first determine the difference between the actual use-per-customer (UPC) and the allowed normalized use-per-customer (NUPC).  These differences are then multiplied by the tail block rate for October through June and by the head block rate for July through September to find the monthly revenue impact differences, said ENE.

          The firm wants the determination of the annual revenue impacts to be more straightforward and accurate by focusing directly on the actual distribution revenues per-customer rather than on sales per-customer which is then used to estimate the distribution revenues.

          The actual revenues per-customer could be easily determined from the billing records and compared to the allowed revenues based on the rate case decision, said ENE.

          There would be no need to determine which portion of the rate should be used to estimate the revenue impact of use differences, added the group.