Largest city, county fight PNM’s request over service costs

Company’s bid to recover fixed service costs would unfairly impact residential, small-business customers, they say

The state’s largest city and county as well as a local advocacy group are asking regulators to throw out Public Service Company of New Mexico’s bid to recover its fixed service costs regardless of how much electricity is used by customers.

The city of Albuquerque, Bernalillo County and the Santa Fe-based group New Energy Economy all filed motions this week calling for the state Public Regulation Commission to dismiss a so-called “decoupling” request made in May by New Mexico’s largest electric provider.

The request, if approved, would allow PNM to apply a “rate rider” on its customers’ bills if it collects less money than the annual amount it’s allowed to collect to cover its costs.

That would essentially separate, or decouple, the amount of energy being used from the amount of money PNM collects in customer payments.

It also would target residential users and many small businesses, resulting in a rate increase for those consumers, said Jeffrey Albright, an attorney for Bernalillo County involved in the filing.

“That’s one of the main issues,” Albright said.

The city of Albuquerque, Bernalillo County and the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority said in their joint legal filing that PNM’s request contained a “deeply flawed and overbroad interpretation” of state law, and it “violates well established regulatory principles.”

They also said PNM’s request should be denied because the potential rate increases that could result from the request would hurt consumers during a time of economic hardship, given the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Dismissal also prevents unjust imposition of a prospective increase of rates only on residential rate payers and small power users during a time when many of them can least afford the increase,” the filing said.

New Energy Economy said in a separate filing that PNM’s request was “particularly inappropriate, egregious and tone deaf ” to residential and small-business customers who have been hit hard by the state’s public health restrictions.