Pepco, the utility that serves 1.1 million customers in D.C. and Maryland, has announced it’s extending breaks for customers who’ve found their energy bills jumped dramatically this winter.
William Ellis, director of external affairs for Pepco, told WTOP that the sticker shock was especially tough on customers due to the mild fall.
“It was a very mild November, where the average temperature was about 60 degrees,” Ellis said.
Compare that to winter weather where “the average temperature has been hovering around 30 degrees,” Ellis said, that led to “tremendous spikes in customers’ usage” and generating high bills.
As a result, Ellis said, Pepco has decided to extend some of the bill management tools for customers it put in place in the first week in February.
While Pepco was granted rate hikes by Maryland and D.C. regulators that could raise bills by as much as 5%, Ellis said the jump in bills is tied to the increased usage tied to the frigid temperatures that hit the region starting in January.
“This has been the highest usage winter we’ve seen in the last decade,” he said.
Under the plan laid out by Pepco, customers will not have to pay late fees for January, February or March.
Disconnections for nonpayment will be suspended through the end of March, and bill repayment periods have been extended. The extensions are intended to help those customers who can only pay portions of their heating bills. So, Ellis said, “if a customer is having that financial difficulty, they can enroll in a payment plan with us up to two years.”
While Pepco extends ways to give customers a bit of a break in managing their energy costs, Ellis recommended they sign up for “budget billing,” a program that spreads billing across a fixed 12-month period.
“So it gives better predictability for our customers,” he added.
Ellis also recommended having energy assessments performed in your home to find ways to cut costs. Among the things homeowners can do to take a chunk out of high bills are installing insulation, sealing up air leaks, and adding weather-stripping to doors and windows.
In the past, Pepco took similar action when government shutdowns hit Washingtonians in their wallets. At that time, said Ellis, “We put these program protections in place during the last government shutdown, where customers were out of work for a period of time,” as a way to relieve the stress that hit a wide swath of the Washington area workforce.
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