GPA management addresses over-billing

Guam - A few months ago, the Guam Power Authority went before lawmakers discussing initiatives and projects it was working on. But Thursday night a much different story, as management had to address how about 1,500 customers received a drastic increase in their power bill.

Rate increases are reflective of GPA trying to allocate the fixed costs in trying to meet the needs of following federal mandates and upgrading its system such as renewable energy, maintaining infrastructure and capital improvement projects.

Of more than 47,000 customers, a majority were only to see no more than a 5% increase. However most recently, the utility agency has identified over 1,400 to date that experienced unexpectedly high increases. Some of those people addressed their concerns last night. "We've experienced more than a 50% increase in our billing just in this past month

During last night's information briefing the Legislative Committee on Utilities alongside the public wanted answers as to what lead to these excessive billings, what's going to be done and in what timeframe. Vice Speaker B.J. Cruz said, "How can we make such a grave error in the number of people that we classified as high-use, high-demand customers? I mean, that's a pretty high mistake error."

Assistant general manager of operations Melinda Camacho responded to the senator, saying, "They were not improperly classified - they were in the correct rate class; but their behavior, their recent behavior, has shown that they qualify for the lower rate class." She says the new rates were never meant to be a burden for customers all at once, but gradually. She says of the count affected, 853 were in the wrong rate class and have since been adjusted. 448 customers meanwhile are under review as they are meeting the criteria set by the rates to possibly move down a class whereas 128 however were identified as being low-load factor or high-demand customers.

Consolidated Utilities Services general manager John Benavente added that this was the first time there's been in a shift in using demand rates as part of the structure. He said, "And so lesson learned this time, really next time when we continue to shift toward demand rates, we have to make a complete analysis of all the customers to determine to catch this type of situation early on."

So now that they've identified the problem, what's next?

Camacho said, "We're going back and that's why the 90 days are necessary to go back as far as 2005 to really look at these customers to see when they qualified and make the adjustment necessary."

However for residential customer John Hickenbottom, he'll have to see it to believe it. For the past month he's seen nothing but increases despite taking steps to decrease his power consumption. "We need some serious work in this area," he said.

And for United Fisheries Corporation's Frank Schacher, he suggested GPA be audited because he doesn't see efficiency. "This power bill gave me a minor stroke. GPA, how are we going to mitigate that?"

GPA meanwhile said they would suspend connections for accounts that are under review and considering petitioning the Public Utilities Commission to amend reclassification criteria. They are contacting customers with issues to assist with these charges with additional phone lines and staffing to handle the increased number of calls.

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