We’ve now reached the midpoint of the 2018 General Assembly session. Perhaps the most contentious bill we dealt with in the first half of the session was the electric utility “rate freeze” repeal.

This bill would repeal the utility rate freeze bill of 2015, which was passed to address concerns about possible rate increases resulting from the Clean Power Plan. The bill froze Dominion’s and Appalachian Power’s rates at their 2015 levels for five and four years respectively.

Rate reviews would begin again in 2020 for Appalachian Power and 2022 for Dominion, but those reviews would not “look back” at earnings made before 2018 (Dominion) and 2017 (Appalachian Power) over the freeze period. Seventy percent of the over-earnings after those dates would be refunded to customers.

With the election of Donald Trump, the Clean Power Plan has been dismantled, and the utilities did not incur the costs they were expected to during the rate-freeze period. As a result, the State Corporation Commission estimates that the utilities have “over-earned” several hundred million dollars since 2015.

Several bills were introduced this session to repeal the rate freeze. Straight repeal bills were defeated as the fight focused on how much of the over-earnings should be returned to customers and how much should be reinvested in the clean energy and electric grid modernization that would benefit all Virginians.