Dive Brief:

• Exelon and Pepco Holdings are altering their merger concessions in Delaware, The News Journal​ reported, to include a larger one-time bill credit for customers of Delmarva Power along with more stringent outage targets.
• The new arrangement would lower overall benefits to consumers, which had been proposed to pay out over a decade, in exchange for more up-front gain.
• The merger must still be approved by regulators in Delaware, Maryland and the District of Columbia, where it has faced tougher opposition.

Dive Insight:

Exelon and Pepco are still tweaking the benefits package for Delaware customers, and are hoping a larger up-front benefit for consumers could put their deal over the top. The News Journal reports that a proposed $40 million bill credit would replace a larger agreement reached in February. That settlement agreement called for more than $51 million in direct benefits, including more than $49 million over 10 years in direct monthly rate credits.

The $6.8 billion merger was proposed a year ago, and would combine Exelon’s three electric and gas utilities – BGE, ComEd and PECO – with Pepco's three – ACE, Delmarva Power and Pepco.

Exact amounts of bill credits are not known yet, and will be determined by regulators. The revised deal could also include more than $35 million for reliability and a pledge to reduce average system outage length time to less than three hours by 2020.

Last month regulators in Maryland delayed a decision on the proposal, extending the schedule until May 8.