ALJ Issued Revised PD on Covid-19 Relief Payment Plan

Today’s disconnection suspension coupled with mandatory, automatic amortizations of debt will relieve customers of the threat of disconnection and put them on a path toward solvency. To address the mixed record of payment plan success, we pair payment plans with intensive follow-up efforts by Community Based Organizations (CBOs) to residential customers, and intensive follow-up efforts by utilities to Small Business customers deepest in debt. The next phase of this proceeding will track by how much state funding for utility bill relief shrinks the debt covered in the payment plans, and for whom.

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Covid-19 Relief Payment Plans for Residential Customers

• Today’s decision suspends disconnections for three more months, giving energy utilities enough time to enroll and notify residential customers that, should they need it, they have two years over which to pay off energy bill debt.
• By September 30, 2021, all eligible residential customers must be automatically enrolled in “COVID-19 Relief Payment Plans,” even if they are likely to receive relief later.
• The rules of the payment plans de facto defer disconnection at least two more months, until December 1, 2021, which gives even more time for the external funding to arrive.
• “COVID-19 Relief Payment Plans” are a temporary program and do not conflict or interfere with or supersede any other assistance program or payment plan customers have already chosen or want to choose.
• “COVID-19Relief Payment Plans” are available only once per customer between July 2021 and September 2022.
• Any customer with arrearages 60 days or older meets the threshold for enrollment in a “COVID-19 Relief Payment Plan.”
• Because we are suspending disconnections of all customers for three months, we find it is appropriate to require PG&E, SCE and SDG&E to continue allocating partial payments on a pro rata basis through September 30, 2021, as they have done throughout the Commission’s disconnection moratorium. We slate allocation after September 30, 2021 for consideration in the immediate next phase of this proceeding.

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Covid-19 Relief Payment Plans for Small Business Customers

• This decision requires suspending disconnections until Small Business customers with energy bill debt are default enrolled into payment plans tailored to the Small Business customer’s amount of debt and ability to recover from the COVID-19 crisis.
• We utilize the Workshop Team #5 recommendations as a framework for relief, ordering two prongs of relief: payment plans plus aggressive utility outreach to counsel Small Businesses on how to best reduce their existing bills. However, we make adjustments primarily to the payment plan terms for Small Business customers. Today’s order does not adopt the payment plan terms recommended by Workshop Team #5 and instead orders energy utilities to set the amortization terms relative to the Small Business customer’s average bill, with the average based on bills over the past 24 months.
• We direct all energy utilities, large or small, to automatically enroll their Small Business customers in plans with payoff terms long enough so that the debt payments add no more than 10% to their typical bill, or for Small Business customers located in disadvantaged communities, no more than 5% to their typical bill.
• We expect utilities to develop a dedicated team prepared to streamline interactions with Small Business customers and jointly evaluate for each Small Business customer in debt which rates, programs and incentives apply.
• We order utilities to work with interested stakeholders to propose a pilot with Small Business customers in disadvantaged communities. Energy utilities shall jointly develop outreach and evaluation protocols, timelines, a budget, and evaluation plan for a pilot to verbally counsel Small Business customers over a series of months and identify impacts on bills over several years. IOUs shall submit their pilot proposal to the Energy Division via a Tier 2 Advice Letter filing within 120 days of the issuance of this decision.