Forty million dollars in electric discounts in Maine, and nobody has to call and ask for them. So what does that actually look like on a bill? It's Power Bill. Also today, Haryana's regulator slaps down a fuel surcharge, and Maryland grades its own rate experiment. Turns out I have notes. Maine first, and the part the percentages leave out. From Drew Johnson at The Portland Press Herald:
Gov. Janet Mills announced on Thursday that $40 million in electricity discounts and other services would be distributed among eligible Maine households through the state’s Low Income Assistance Program, and many will be enrolled automatically this year. Amounts vary by income, but eligible Central Maine Power customers could see discounts anywhere between 25% and 81%, while Versant customers could get between 17% and 83% off monthly, according to the announcement.
I'll say it first: Maine got this one right. About twenty-three thousand households were eligible last year and never got the discount. Now if you're on SNAP, MaineCare, or heating assistance, it just shows up on your bill. Nobody has to call anybody. And the number people are going to hear is up to eighty-one percent off at CMP, eighty-three at Versant. What that means in dollars depends entirely on your own bill. The announcement only gives a range. Right, and the floor is seventeen percent at Versant. So who's sitting at seventeen? Probably somebody working, just under that hundred-fifty-percent-of-poverty line. That's the household a pending CMP base-rate case could eat right back up. One more line item. The forty million is up from twenty-two and a half last year, and it's largely paid for by a monthly surcharge on ratepayers. So every other bill in the state carries a piece of this. Fair trade, I think. But it belongs on the bill where people can actually see it. And if you're not already in a DHHS program? You still have to apply. Automatic reaches a lot of people. Not all of them. From The Times of India:
The Haryana Electricity Regulatory Commission (HERC) has rejected a petition by state power distribution companies seeking to recover Rs 1,134.5 crore from consumers under the fuel surcharge adjustment (FSA). Former minister and Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) patron Sampat Singh, who had opposed the petition during public hearings, welcomed the decision.
Haryana. The regulator, HERC, told the two state discoms, UHBVN and DHBVN, no on recovering Rs 1,134.5 crore in fuel surcharge. And the guy who fought it at the public hearings, former minister Sampat Singh, actually won. Somebody showed up, and it mattered. Read why they lost, though. Those were November 2025 fuel charges, and the discoms didn't get them into billing cycles before the January 2026 deadline. So they forfeited them. Wait, so it's a missed deadline? Mostly, yeah. Puerto Rico's Energy Bureau said fuel costs shouldn't flow through automatically just because they were incurred. Haryana enforced a calendar. Same outcome for about 84 lakh consumers, and experts put it at over ten percent through a uniform surcharge. What that is in rupees depends on your own bill. Fine, a calendar. But in Puerto Rico households carried the fuel miss. Here the utility's own paperwork lapse lands on the utility. I'll take that trade every time. From Tony Ruffin at Maryland Public Service Commission:
The goals established for the pilot were largely unachieved. Although the framework shortened cost-recovery periods for utilities and offered some visibility into proposed capital and operations spending, the Commission did not find that those changes produced clear, measurable benefits for ratepayers.
Maryland's commission, in its own order, says the multi-year rate plan pilot's goals were 'largely unachieved.' Utilities got shorter cost-recovery periods. Ratepayers got no 'clear, measurable benefits.' Their words. And I'll give them real credit for putting that in writing. A regulator graded its own experiment on what it did for customers and admitted it came up short. I want every commission doing that. Okay, credit given. But people paid bills under that framework. Somebody on a fixed income in Baltimore financed faster cost recovery for years, and this order doesn't send a dime of it back. Right, there's no immediate bill reduction in this order. What you get is a two-phase review, with the utilities tasked to design the replacement, done by mid-2027. So the number for your bill doesn't exist yet. It depends on what that redesign produces. The utilities get to redesign the plan that worked out fine for the utilities. Haryana told its utilities no. Maryland's admitting it got this wrong. Good, I'll take the admission. But the redesign needs a per-household dollar figure before anybody signs off on it. If you're enjoying Power Bill, please subscribe or leave us a review wherever you're listening. Reviews help other people find the show, and we're grateful you're here.
We'll be watching Maryland's two-phase review of a redesigned, forward-looking ratemaking approach. That's due to wrap up by mid-2027.
Links to every story are in the show notes, so take a look at the ones you want to dig into. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next episode. That's Power Bill for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.