MARYLAND (WBFF) — As Kumar Barve settles into his new role as chair of the Maryland Public Service Commission, at a time when many residents are feeling the strain from unaffordable energy bills, he said he plans to advocate for ratepayers and hold utility companies accountable.
“Under my leadership, we’re going to be very, very aggressive in pursuing the best interest of the ratepayers in the State of Maryland,” Chair Barve said. “And what I mean by that is that we are going to kind of take an accountant’s view to the details of what utilities want to spend money on, and making sure that everything is prudent, everything is reasonable, and that there’s no extraneous expenditure.”
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When it comes to utility spending, Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) has drawn sharp criticism from lawmakers and advocates who have argued the utility has been overspending on infrastructure projects, like pipeline replacements. This criticism has fueled their support for legislation in Annapolis, which would impact how utilities could recover costs from ratepayers. However, officials with BGE have long argued their infrastructure spending is necessary to support an aging system.
“When you’re replacing a pipe that’s 100-years-old, it’s hard to describe it as overspending,” Barve said. “The question is, which 100-year-old pipe or how many of them do you replace this year versus next year versus the next year? And I don’t think anybody has thought about a time-phased approach to this. And it’s one of the things that we are going to have to spend more time in the Commission considering very seriously.”
At the end of last year, the PSC denied millions in funding BGE requested. While BGE requested $152.3 million, the Commission’s order instead only granted them $77.2 million. On top of that, other BGE-related issues have been brought before the PSC, including more than 650 complaints about BGE’s call center.
“I was feeling angry about the situation and I know the people in the Baltimore region feel angry about the situation, and I think they definitely got the message on that,” Barve said in response to the call center issues and previous hearings related to the matter. “We want to see progress. We don’t want to hear any excuses. And hopefully, I believe that they’re committed to fixing this problem. But again, we’re going to have to keep on top of it.
Officials with BGE have said they are committed to fixing the issue, and have made staffing and system-wide changes. During a hearing a few weeks ago, Steven Singh, BGE’s Vice President of Customer Operations, said they have made improvements. He said the average wait time has improved from 150 minutes to 32 minutes. He also said customer appointment punctuality has increased from 21% to 85%.
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When it comes to rising supply prices, driven largely by data center demands, Barve said he believes the data center forecasts are “overblown” due to “phantom load,” meaning companies have expressed interest in building data centers in multiple locations at the same time. Barve acknowledged there can be challenges in accurately assessing which projects will actually be built.
“One of the problems, one of the frustrations that I have as a regulator, is in the PJM, which is the grid that in which we live, they don’t have a really good handle on how many data centers are really going to be built. They are, in my opinion, overestimating that number,” Barve said.
However, while he is optimistic about legislation passed last year aimed to address energy issues, to provide relief to ratepayers and bring energy bills down he said more generation is needed, and supported an all-of-the-above approach, which includes natural gas, along with renewable options like solar and battery projects.
“I think it’s foolish to say we’re going to do this, but not that. I’m for doing everything we can to get supply and demand back into sync,” he said.
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