Dive Summary:
- West Penn Power will be increasing its customer's bills in preparation for the utility's $442 million smart meter deployment plan, resulting in its average customer eventually pay $2.61 more each month.
- West Penn has already been billing it's customers an average of 70 cents more since 2010, when it first added smart meter fees to its bills, but the utility will now be purchasing the new meters and installing them over a seven-year period.
- Pennsylvania utilities are allowed to bill customers for future smart meter upgrades as part of Act 129, which requires the installation of smart meters and allows the utilities to charge their customers all associated costs.
From the article:
“It’s a small number [of customers], so we wanted to start there for a test. It’s a verification period for us to make sure the information from our studies is accurate and make sure smart meters work as we believe they will work,” Surgeoner said.
Through 2019, the meters would be installed in the rest of FirstEnergy’s territory, he said. ...