Your Maritime Electric bill could be going up again

Maritime Electric wants to charge customers for energy it had to buy unexpectedly last year, asking for a new increase despite a price bump earlier this year and amid uncertainty about who will bear the costs for damage from last year's post-tropical storm.

The utility has asked the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission (IRAC) if it can start charging almost $5 million to customers' bills for a year, starting Oct 1, due to unplanned shutdowns at the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station outside Saint John, N.B.

In an interview with CBC News, CEO Jason Roberts said it would mean a 1.6-per-cent increase for residential customers — around $27 a year. Small businesses would face a roughly $455 increase. 

Roberts said when actual costs differ from the forecast made when the utility is setting rates, they move to recover it at later dates. In 2022, Point Lepreau had one planned 60-day outage last longer than expected, as well as three additional, unplanned outages totalling about 36 days.

'Some bumps along the way'

The nuclear power plant has had "some bumps along the way" in the last couple of years, but has by and large been a reliable source of energy for the Island since the mid-'90s, he said.

"Hopefully we turn the corner in the coming years and it returns to what it's historically been like."

A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers Canada review of N.B. Power operations found planned maintenance outages at Lepreau that went poorly have been a key contributor to the utility's financial struggles.  

It blamed much of that on rosy expectations inside N.B. Power that fixing issues at the plant will go better in the future than it has in the past.

"Outage plans are often developed based on the ideal state," said a draft of a Pricewaterhouse Canada report entered as evidence at an N.B. Power rate hearing earlier this year.

Roberts said he believes N.B. Power is putting the right time and effort into the proper maintenance at the facility.

Rate hikes past and future

People can submit written comments about the P.E.I. price increase to IRAC by Sept. 1.

Some rate increases were already approved earlier this year.

If these latest ones are added, residential customers will pay almost 10 per cent more for electricity by 2025 — and that doesn't include the costs of damage from September 2022's post-tropical storm Fiona.

Maritime Electric has said if Ottawa doesn't pick up the Fiona costs, electricity rates Islanders pay could rise by two to three per cent. 

The company has said it's too early to say, because it hasn't received official confirmation on whether some level of government will be assisting the company with its Fiona-related spending.

The Liberal's provincial infrastructure critic, Robert Henderson, noted earlier this week that if the provincial government pays the bill, it still falls to taxpayers. In that case, he said the better option is for Maritime Electric to cover its own bill, as that way the company would have to go through IRAC to justify a rate increase.

Roberts said the utility is sensitive to the impact increases have on consumers and that they work daily with customers struggling to pay their bills.

"I would encourage any customer that's having challenges to continue to reach out to us and we're quite willing to work with them."