Anyone else dealing with Chugach Electric's recent rate restructuring up here in Alaska? They've implemented some unique billing provisions that I haven't seen in other territories. The cold weather adjustment factors are creating calculation errors, especially for facilities with variable heating loads. Has anyone developed audit strategies for these Alaska-specific rate provisions? The regulatory environment up here is pretty different from the lower 48.
Chugach Electric rate increase - Alaska-specific billing oddities
Scott, I haven't worked in Alaska but we have similar weather adjustment clauses here in Rhode Island with National Grid. The key is understanding how they're calculating the heating degree day adjustments and whether they're using the correct weather station data. I've found errors where utilities use regional weather data instead of the specific location weather data required by the tariff. Worth checking if Chugach is making similar mistakes.
Scott, Anthony's advice about weather station data is spot on. Down here in Alabama we don't have cold weather adjustments, but Alabama Power uses similar methodology for summer cooling adjustments. I've recovered thousands by proving they were using incorrect temperature data for specific customer locations. If Chugach is using automated weather feeds, there's probably room for error in the data source verification. Might be worth investigating.