Tonight there's a ugly spat unfolding between BEL and its regulator, the Public Utilities Commission - and a public document circulated by the PUC employs some strong language against the monopoly utility. It accuses them of flouting the law, and buying power from expensive sources and then expecting consumers to foot the bill.
But, amidst all that back and forth is the bad news for you: your light bill will be going up - from an average of 39.9 cents per kilowatt hour to 41.5 cents for January to June 2022. And what's driving this is the increased cost of power - owing mostly to higher fuel costs.
But - in the plainest language we have ever seen coming out of the PUC - the regulator says BEL has not been managing its power purchasing in the consumers' best interests.
In "Comments related to the Draft Decision", the PUC says, quote, "from September 1, 2021 to September 24, 2021, there were excessive instances where BEL elected to purchase power from BECOL when the cost of power from CFE in Mexico was significantly lower. The PUC also identified...instances, in the last week of September 2021, where BEL elected to purchase power from CFE when the cost of purchasing power in the domestic market was significantly lower."
The notes continue, "The combined effect of the above…was that the Cost of Power to consumers for the month of September 2021 would be $2,000,000 (two million dollars) more than it could have been had BEL dispatched using the lowest-cost mix of generation plants to meet demand." End quote.
But, when it tried to drill down into the numbers in December, the PUC said that BEL slacked up in providing numbers. In a super scolding paragraph, the PUC says, quote, "the Commission states clearly that it takes exception to the way that BEL continues to flout the law and intentionally ignores reasonable requests for information…" end quote. It's so bad that the PUC says its planning to change the legislation to make it so that submissions lacking information will be marked as non submissions - basically treating the massive monopoly like school children handing in incomplete homework.
The notes end with a huff, saying, "The Commission intends to ensure that future dispatch decisions are reasonable and prudent and to disallow any request for a rate increase, where, in its view, BEL's dispatch decisions were not consistent with good utility practices."
