By Leslie Bonilla Muñiz
Indiana Capital Chronicle
Indiana residents owed $45.6 million to the state’s “big five” investor-owned utilities in March, the most recent month for which complete data is available — with thousands among them cut off from service. Fewer were reconnected.
That’s according to data reported to Indiana’s Office of the Utility Consumer Counselor, current as of June 30, under a settlement agreement finalized last October. The five include AES Indiana, CenterPoint Energy, Duke Energy, Indiana Michigan Power, and the Northern Indiana Public Service Company.
“That sounds like an extraordinary amount of debt,” Citizens Action Coalition Executive Director Kerwin Olson said. The utility customer advocate group wasn’t a party in the settlement.
But the data still doesn’t include everyone.
Olson noted the settlement excludes the state’s next-largest utility company: Citizens Energy Group, a public trust providing natural gas, water and wastewater services to the Indianapolis area. It also leaves out numerous municipal and cooperative providers, as well as all water and wastewater providers, he added.
The above are subject to less Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission oversight.
Many in arrears
About 186,000 Hoosier accounts were 60-plus days behind on bills in March — or about 5 percent of the 3.6 million total accounts — but customers of some utilities fared better.
The accounts don’t always equate to individual households, as some utilities providing both electricity and natural gas reported account data for both service types.
Hoosier utility debt in March 2023:
• AES Indiana: 419,000 accounts owe $6.5 million
• CenterPoint North and South: 828,000 accounts owe $4.2 million
• Duke: 746,000 accounts owe $18.7 million
• I&M: 419,000 accounts owe $1.9 million
• NIPSCO: 1.2 million accounts owe $14.3 million
The Capital Chronicle made calculations using all the months available in the most recent compilation of filings, which vary by utility — individual time periods are specified.
AES Indiana — which provides electricity to residents in the greater Indianapolis area — reported the highest proportion of indebted customers in data running from September 2022 to April 2023.
A whopping 10 percent of AES Indiana customers owed the utility money. That rose to 38 percent over that period for low-income customers participating in the federally funded Energy Assistance Program, although AES logged accounts just 30 days behind on bills.
But the lower rate of debt belies a higher average amount of debt: more than $470 owed per indebted CenterPoint South customer from September through March. NIPSCO reported the lowest average amount owed, at $96 per indebted customer from January 2022 through March 2023.
Indiana’s investor-owned utilities are regulated monopolies, meaning that they have exclusive service territories, and in exchange, the IURC regulates more aspects of their businesses.
Olson said that while the price of energy is a key factor in how businesses decide to locate, the effects may be subtler for residential utility customers.
“You can’t have a choice of who your provider is. But over the years, there are people in Evansville who have moved across the bridge to Henderson, Kentucky because of CenterPoint prices,” he said. “There are people in other service territories who know that if they move a mile down the road they’ll have Pittsboro Electric instead of Duke Energy.”
Disconnections and accommodations
Some utilities reported markedly higher proportions of service disconnections to indebted customers, but emphasized their efforts to support struggling consumers.
I&M data, for example, logged about 13,800 shut-offs over March, April and May 2023. That’s about 36 percent of the customers it said were in debt in that time period.
NIPSCO, meanwhile, said it disconnected about 18,900 customers from January 2022 to March 2023 — just 1.3 percent of its indebted customers over that time period. That was the lowest percentage.
But the data can’t tell the whole story, like how long a household went without utility service, Olson noted: hours, days, weeks or more. And without knowing service addresses, it’s unclear where struggling households are concentrated.
Olson said consumer advocates would get a peek into some of that information in an AES Indiana rate case, but it’s not part of the settlement data reports.
And the utilities typically file their data at different data, covering different time periods and in different formats, complicating analyses.
AES Indiana offers short- and long-term payment arrangements and extensions for consumers facing disconnection, according to a statement. It’s also piloting a “Power of Change” program, giving one-time grants to income-qualified customers, and also offers free in-home energy assessments and upgrades to help low-income customers lower their energy bills.
Spokeswoman Kelly Young added that the utility exceeds medical hold mandates, allowing two 20-day holds without a doctor’s note in lieu of the required 10-day hold with a note.
NIPSCO, which reported cutting off the lowest percentage of people, emphasized in a statement that “keeping our customers connected is the focus, and disconnection is a last-resort option.”
Spokeswoman Wendy Lussier said the utility offers bill payment assistance plans, energy assistance programs and energy efficiency solutions — like help programs for low-income seniors and active duty members of the military or veterans.
And NIPSCO has continued what began as a request from regulators to offer a 12-month flexible payment plan to EAP-participants — but it’s available to “all customers, regardless of income,” Lussier wrote.
From March through May 2023, about 47 percent of Duke customers more than 60 days behind on bills had payment plans with the utility — the highest rate among the ‘big five.’ NIPSCO reported the lowest proportion — about 8 percent — covering January 2022 through March 2023.
But NIPSCO customers on payment plans appeared to owe the most on average: about $756 over its 14-month time period. CenterPoint North customers on payment plans owed the least: about $357, on average, from September 2022 to March 2023 .
Less than a year of data left
Such information on Indiana’s largest utilities wasn’t publicly available until the pandemic severely disrupted Hoosier finances, leading the OUCC and consumer advocate groups like Olson’s to push for data reporting.
In May 2020, regulators asked numerous utility companies to report a larger range of data on a monthly basis, nearly all of it backdated to October 2019. They did so through 2021.
Advocates asked for another round of data last year. That case ended in a settlement finalized in October 2022, and was more limited in who was included.
It required the ‘big five’ to submit reports to the OUCC beginning in October that year and continuing through February 2023. Since March, the utilities have been filing quarterly.
A separate settlement includes three smaller natural gas utilities.
That means Hoosiers haven’t had consistent or comprehensive data for long — and advocates like Olson can’t tell what’s typical, or “acceptable.”
“For decades now, [Citizens Action Coalition] has been talking about the need for the reporting of customer data. For years, we have been pushing this issue,” he said. “And it was never reported until COVID hit. We simply don’t have the historic information to sort of compare and say, ‘This is normal,’ [or] ‘This isn’t normal.’
And that reporting requirement will end after March 2024, according to the settlement. The agreement prevents the OUCC from re-asking for data until that point, and requires it to file a new request with regulators.
When asked if it planned to continue reporting after the requirement ends, AES Indiana and NIPSCO demurred.
Olson was wearier, recounting how numerous reporting bills over the years have died in Statehouse committees without ever getting hearings.
“They’re not going to unless somebody makes them,” he said of the utilities.