CMP Accused of Overspending on Storm Restoration
Image courtesy of Western Area Power under Attribution 2.0 Generic License, resized to 700 x 391 pixels.
Maine regulators have accused Central Maine Power (CMP), which serves 650k customers, of overspending on storm restoration last year. Maine’s Office of the Public Advocate filed testimony with the state’s public utilities commission (PUC) claiming that CMP overspent on 12 of the 23 storms the utility responded to in 2022.
The burning question: is this fair? The logical answer: no.
Why is CMP Accused of Overspending on Storm Restoration?
The regulatory agency is looking to claw back $53.6 million from CMP. This is supposedly the amount of money the utility overspent on staffing, particularly mutual assistance crews from out of state. Overall, CMP has requested a recovery of $125 million for its 2022 storm efforts, so if the claw back request is successful, CMP would only be entitled to $68.4 million.
An analyst with the advocate’s office suggested that the utility “failed to follow staffing guidelines” in its emergency response plan and ?imprudently incurred? excessive storm costs that should not be eligible for recovery.
CMP was clearly caught off guard with the claim. The utility said that most of the claw back amount ($45 million) was from Winter Storm Elliott in December 2022, which caused more than 300k outages. CMP brought in 637 out-of-state crews for that restoration effort, costing roughly $58 million, which allowed the power to be fully restored in 3.5 days. The utility said that if the staffing guidelines were strictly followed during Winter Storm Elliott, some customers would have likely been out of power for twice as long, up to 10 days in some cases.
So, what’s the lesson here? Whatever it is, it’s a bad message. Are utility companies supposed to spend less and endure the wrath of customers and government officials complaining about how long the restoration took? The whole thing is ridiculous, and reeks of some government shlepp overstepping their bounds and trying to get attention to further their career.
The bottom line is, if CMP really was overspending on storm restoration in 2022, I’m pretty sure there’s a darn good reason for it!
