Dive Brief:
- Dominion Virginia Power wants to submit less financial data to state regulators than in past years, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports, following the state's decision to freeze the utility's rates for five years.
- The utility said less financial data is necessary as rates are frozen, but opponents — including Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, the staff of the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC), and major industrial users — believe Dominion is pulling back from promises to be open and transparent.
- Dominion lobbied for the rate freeze, warning the state that new emissions mandates could send power prices significantly higher. The freeze restricts the scope of this year's rate review and defers any further reviews until 2022.
Dive Insight:
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe signed a law last month freezing Dominion rates as the state deals with compliance mandates that could spike power prices before legal challenges to some of the requirements are fully litigated. The rate freeze was controversial, but Dominion told customers that it would not weaken oversight but merely lock in prices.
In a letter to customers, Dominion Virginia Power President Robert Blue wrote that the company "would continue to provide the [State Corporation Commission] with full access to our financials."
"The only difference is that for a limited number of years Dominion could not ask for an increase in our 'base rates' ... and the SCC could not decrease them," Blue said.
But in a filing with the SCC, Dominion said the freeze means some types of information would not be necessary, such as data “that relates to forward-looking adjustments to determine the company’s projected costs and revenues.”
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports the state's attorney general’s office and staff of the SCC are now calling foul on the utility. That move, they say, runs contrary to the assurances given when Dominion was lobbying for the freeze and there should be no limits on the information that regulators can request.
