Friday 21 April 2023

Utilities board denies request by J.D. Irving Ltd. to broaden upcoming N.B. Power hearing

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/nb-utilities-board-deny-request-irving-1.6817348
 

Utilities board denies request by J.D. Irving Ltd. to broaden upcoming N.B. Power hearing

Company says millions of dollars in power costs assigned to industry need shifting to residential customers

In a decision released Thursday to resolve what had been another testy dispute between N.B. Power and its largest industrial customer, the board ruled that the utility does not immediately have to calculate and adopt a seasonal allocation of its electricity supply costs at an upcoming rate-design hearing in June.

"Leave to expand the scope of this proceeding … is denied," François Beaulieu, board chair, said in the oral ruling.

The decision means that what could have been up to $5 million in winter electricity costs, currently assigned by N.B. Power to industrial customers, will not be transferred and charged to residential customers anytime soon.

An outside view of an electric generating station. Winter heating demands by residential customers force N.B. Power to maintain and operate the expensive oil-fired generating station at Coleson Cove, which otherwise remains idle for much of the year. (Robert Jones/CBC)

The dispute emerged in advance of an upcoming June hearing that will begin a long-delayed review of how N.B. Power charges its customers for electricity.

The rate-design hearing is one of several expected over the next few years that could ultimately produce dramatic changes to improve the efficiency of the electrical system and pricing fairness among consumers of power.

Residential customers navigating multiple high, medium and low power rates every day is one potential outcome, but large issues like those will not be dealt with until much later in the process.

Hearing expansion requested by JDI

The first hearing will focus mostly on mundane matters, including reorganizing some of N.B. Power's commercial and industrial customer groups.

It will also address whether churches, farms and charities should be charged residential or commercial rates, whether prices at electric-vehicle charging stations should kept low and a number of other matters.

That list frustrated J.D. Irving Ltd., which earlier this month asked the utilities board to force N.B. Power to expand the first hearing to include a look at introducing a seasonal allocation of its costs that would govern customer pricing.

That set up another clash with N.B. Power two months after the two organizations tangled in a two-week hearing over the utility's April 1 rate increase.

The outside of a green-cladded industrial building with a large Irving corporate logo sign on the front, with "grand lake timber" in green letters below it. Several vehicles are parked in the yard around the building. J.D. Irving Ltd. has multiple manufacturing facilities in New Brunswick and is N.B. Power's largest industrial customer. took a lead role in fighting the utility's latest rate increase, and this week tried to force changes in another upcoming hearing. (CBC)

N.B. Power opposed the call for seasonal costing as coming too close to a June hearing that has been scheduled for nearly a year.

"The request is quite late," said N.B. Power lawyer John Furey, who called JDI's request "inherently unfair."

N.B. Power is required by the utilities board to allocate the cost of supplying electricity in New Brunswick among different customer groups and pricing electricity to the groups based on that allocation.

"Cost allocation is the foundation for establishing just and reasonable rates," Beaulieu reiterated on Thursday. 

"It is an essential component of the rate-design process." 

Most expensive to service

Residential customers who heat with electricity are the most expensive to service because their consumption patterns can swing up and down by factors of ten, or more, depending on the time of day, the day of the year and the temperature outside.

N.B. Power has to maintain a fleet of generating stations to serve the moment of highest demand each winter, even though many of the facilities are unneeded for much of the year.

Currently, the utility assigns costs for all of the assets and expenses required to deliver electricity among customers annually, but evidence at earlier hearings has shown if it was done seasonally — once for N.B. Power's winter operations and once for non-winter operations — it would cause a shift in costs mostly from industrial customers toward residential customers.

N.B. Power concedes that point but opposes changes in the immediate term, partly because it is electric-heating customers behind the seasonal expense, and residential customers are a mixture of those who do and don't heat with electricity.

Two woman talk behind computers wearing business attire. J.D. Irving Ltd. lawyers Nancy Rubin (right) and Brianne Rudderham (left) were unsuccessful in convincing the board to broaden the scope of an upcoming rate-design hearing to look at whether some industrial power costs should be assigned to residential customers, instead. (Ed Hunter/CBC)

The utility presented evidence from consultant John Todd suggesting that more sophisticated costing data and pricing options are "imminent" in New Brunswick with the installation of smart metres that will quickly make seasonal costing obsolete. 

Nancy Rubin, a lawyer for J.D. Irving Ltd., disputed that idea. She called N.B. Power concerns about the potential negative effects on seasonal costing to residential customers "alarmist" and noted smart metres will not be fully deployed in New Brunswick until 2025.

"Mr. Todd's concept of imminent is quite different from my concept of imminent," she said.

In denying J.D. Irving's application, Beaulieu noted N.B. Power's current cost allocation analysis may be stale and proposed a procedural conference in late June, after the rate-design hearing, to discuss how and when it should be updated.   

"The board concludes that a review of N.B. Power's cost allocation methodology, including but not limited to any consideration of seasonal cost allocation, is appropriate," he said.

Corrections

  • A previous version of this story said that J.D. Irving Ltd.'s request had set up a clash with N.B. Power less than a month after a prior two-week hearing. The clash in fact came two months after the hearing.
    Apr 21, 2023 7:47 AM AT

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Robert Jones

Reporter

Robert Jones has been a reporter and producer with CBC New Brunswick since 1990. His investigative reports on petroleum pricing in New Brunswick won several regional and national awards and led to the adoption of price regulation in 2006.

CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices
 
 
 
71 Comments
 

 
David Amos
Welcome back to the circus
 
 
 
David Amos
From whom is NB Power buying the oil firm to burn at Coleson Cove?  
 
 
 
 
David Amos
Methinks Mr Jones has been reading my emails N'esy Pas?
 
 
Harvey York 
Reply to David Amos  
methinks your emails go straight into his junk folder
 
 
David Amos
Reply to Harvey York
How would you know? 
 
 
Michael Cain
Reply to Harvey York
That is a great feature in mail; block and throw unwanted mail into the junk folder. Out of sight, out of mind.   
 
 
David Amos
Reply to Michael Cain 
Jones does not block me Hell he introduced me to his lawyer in 2009 and I even booted him out of my hair at a EUB hearing
 
 
David Amos
Reply to David Amos
Methinks Mr Jones should have asked the JDI lawyers why they were not sending me their motions etc N'esy Pas?


 
 
 
Rosco holt
Residential customers need to be represented to counter the multiple lawyers from industrials.
 
 
David Amos

Reply to Rosco holt  I am doing my best without getting arrested again 
 
 
David Amos
Reply to Rosco holt  
What do think I have been doing? 
 
 
Harvey York 
Reply to David Amos
Ahh Davie, you're the hero we've all been waiting for 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Ferdinand Boudreau  
Rich get richer, poor get poorer  
 
 
Inger Nielsen 
Reply to Ferdinand Boudreau  
yup because as the rich know the poor do not stand up for theselves and can get away with what ever they want by exploting and gouging the market . time for the government to protect the people who vote them in with market inflation control and caps 
 

David Amos
Reply to Inger Nielsen  
What am I chopped liver?  
 
 
 
 
 
Michael Collins  
The GREED of this corporate Empire knows no bounds. And the backbone of successive governments has been consistently shown to be made of jelly. 
 

David Amos
Reply to Michael Collins  
Oh So True 
 



Roy Kirk 
. . . And millions of dollars currently paid by small residential customers should properly be shifted to larger residential customers who drive the costs through their large peak coincident loads. But it's not going to happen!

NB Power's cost allocations and rate designs have historically been too heavily influenced by political considerations and skewed towards the economic interests of the utility.

And let's not get started on the rationale for NB Power customers subsidizing bitcoin mining.

 
David Amos

Reply to Roy Kirk  
Methinks folks may recall I had some fun with that on New Years Eve not so long ago N'esy Pas?

The buzz in Saint-André: An inside look at bitcoin mining in rural New Brunswick

This cryptocurrency mining operation in province's northwest requires thousands of computers

Shane Fowler · CBC News · Posted: Dec 31, 2021 7:00 AM AST

 
 
 
 
Stephanie Haslam 
The following piece has good advice, which really needs our consideration. We are in need of major reforms at every level of government. Look at the news yesterday— 13 billion in taxpayer money to a huge corporation (Volkswagen). “ Instead, our anticorruption efforts should focus on the precise point at which public corruption comes into play: when corporations come to exercise public power. Corporate public corruption is most likely when the industry itself is very large and heavily concentrated; when there are cross-industry interests in bending public power; or when a single corporation has become essential to a polity, or “too big to fail.”
In other words, we should focus public policy on the problem of corporations exercising public power–which only happens at a certain scale and degree of power –and not the problems of corporations being selfish: let them be selfish, but do not let them govern.” https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/147/3/111/27209/The-Problem-of-Monopolies-amp-Corporate-Public 


Donald LeBlanc
Reply to Stephanie Haslam
Or “legally” avoid paying their taxes to the tune of billions of dollars. 

 
David Amos
Reply to Stephanie Haslam
Good luck with that
 
 
 

 
Jim Beam
The largest beneficiary of public subsidization can't quite stomach subsidizing the public on their power bill. 


Donald LeBlanc
Reply to Jim Beam  
Yes, and for regular folks it’s getting as stomach turning opening power bills these days as it is opening property tax bills. 
 
 
David Amos
Reply to Donald LeBlanc
C'est Vrai 
 



Kyle Woodman  
It funny to hear these gripes from JDI when they get wood off the crown for a pittance and then generate electricity themselves from the hog fuel waste. We are subsidizing their business in every way possible, but they still want more. 
 
 
Kyle Woodman 
Reply to Kyle Woodman 
 
 
Kyle Woodman 
Reply to Kyle Woodman  
 
 
Jim Beam
Reply to Kyle Woodman
Wow, literally completely paid for by tax payers. 
 
 
Michael Cain 
Reply to Kyle Woodman 
Aside from the $500,000 grant, these were loans more than 10 years ago, question should be if they were repaid, don't ya think?  
 
 
David Amos

Reply to Kyle Woodman
It should be a small wonder to you why I was falsely arrested in Fat Fred City in 2008 
 
 
Kyle Woodman 
Reply to Michael Cain 
 
 
Michael Cain
Reply to Kyle Woodman
Better example than the first couple; these are federal    
 
 
 
 
 
Michael Cain
As our great premier would say, on behalf of this do-nothing government "It is what it is!" 
 
 
Lou Bell
Reply to Michael Cain
Naw . Take a look at the latest great news from the Higgs government ! A new 67 million dollar complex for Miramichi ! They'd waited almost a decade to get government money and Higgs did the job ! Unlike the previous Liberal government , the real " do nothing government " ! 
 
 
Lou Bell
Reply to Michael Cain 
I'd list all the Higgs government has done since being elected but space is limited ! 
 
 
David Amos

Reply to Lou Bell
Say Hey to Higgy for me will ya?
 
 
 

YO Higgy Methinks we have a problem with NB Power N'esy Pas?

  

David Amos

<david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
AttachmentThu, Apr 20, 2023 at 11:04 PM
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Cc: "blaine.higgs" <blaine.higgs@gnb.ca>, "Holland, Mike (LEG)" <mike.holland@gnb.ca>, "David.Coon" <David.Coon@gnb.ca>, "Mitton, Megan (LEG)" <megan.mitton@gnb.ca>, "Rene.Legacy" <Rene.Legacy@gnb.ca>, "Robert. Jones" <Robert.Jones@cbc.ca>, "Arseneau, Kevin (LEG)" <kevin.a.arseneau@gnb.ca>, "Ross.Wetmore" <Ross.Wetmore@gnb.ca>


https://davidraymondamos3.blogspot.com/2023/01/provinces-rate-meddling-partly-to-blame.html

Province's rate-meddling partly to blame for utility troubles, N.B.
Power CEO suggests


MLAs receive frank talk on N.B. Power troubles from acting president Lori Clark
Robert Jones · CBC News · Posted: Jan 27, 2023 8:00 AM AST

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: NBP Regulatory <NBPRegulatory@nbpower.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2023 14:26:14 +0000
Subject: Matter 0529 - NB Power 2022 Rate Design Application -
Responses to Interrogatories (Round 2)
To: "Mitchell, Kathleen" <Kathleen.Mitchell@nbeub.ca>,
"general@nbeub.ca" <general@nbeub.ca>, "ceo@fermenbfarm.ca"
<ceo@fermenbfarm.ca>, "louis-philippe.gauthier@cfib.ca"
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<Ron.marcolin@cme-mec.ca>, "David.Raymond.Amos333@gmail.com"
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<david.sollows@gnb.ca>, "hanrahan.dion@jdirving.com"
<hanrahan.dion@jdirving.com>, "nrubin@stewartmckelvey.com"
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<JohnFurey@fureylegal.com>, "Petrie, Jamie" <JPetrie@nbpower.com>,
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Veronique Otis <Veronique.Otis@nbeub.ca>, "Young, Dave"
<Dave.Young@nbeub.ca>, "Aherrington@lawsoncreamer.com"
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Melissa Curran <Melissa.Curran@nbeub.ca>, "richard.williams@gnb.ca"
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<tyler.rajeski@twinriverspaper.com>,
"darcy.ouellette@twinriverspaper.com"
<darcy.ouellette@twinriverspaper.com>, "dan.murphy@umnb.ca"
<dan.murphy@umnb.ca>, "jeff.garrett@sjenergy.com"
<jeff.garrett@sjenergy.com>, "shelley.wood@sjenergy.com"
<shelley.wood@sjenergy.com>, "dan.dionne@perth-andover.com"
<dan.dionne@perth-andover.com>, "pierreroy@edmundston.ca"
<pierreroy@edmundston.ca>, "ryan.mitchell@sjenergy.com"
<ryan.mitchell@sjenergy.com>, "sstoll@stollprofcorp.com"
<sstoll@stollprofcorp.com>, "pzarnett@bdrenergy.com"
<pzarnett@bdrenergy.com>

Good morning,

NB Power has transferred its 2022 Rate Design Application (Round 2)
interrogatory responses to the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities
Board's secure FTP site, in accordance with the approved schedule for
this Matter.

In addition to the documents transferred via FTP, please find the
following documents attached to this email:


  1.  IR responses (Round 2) for each of Board staff, Public
Intervener, David Amos, J.D. Irving Limited, and Utilities Municipal
  2.  Master List of Filing Documents

In order to access the filed documents please visit the following site
using the log-in information provided below:

FTP site:  https://dtfiledrop.cirrus9.net/login.html<https://dtfiledrop.cirrus9.net/login.html>

Account: Intervener5
Password: xxxxxxxxx

Per normal practice, responses containing information over which NB
Power is claiming confidentiality have been uploaded to a separate FTP
site.  All confidential documents are classified as Confidential
Restricted.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to respond to this email.

Kind regards,






[cid:image001.png@01D96876.D7E18110]
Laura Gordon (She/Her)
Analyst II, Corporate Regulatory Affairs|
Analyste II, affaires réglementaires d'entreprise
T: 506.458.4959
C: 506.429.8556
nbpower.com | energienb.com



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6 attachmentsScan and download all attachments

00-Master List of Filing Documents.pdf
81K View as HTML Scan and download

01-NBP Responses to Interrogatories (Round 2) of the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board (NBEUB).pdf
832K View as HTML Scan and download

02-NBP Responses to Interrogatories (Round 2) of the Public Intervener (PI).pdf
121K View as HTML Scan and download

03-NBP Responses to Interrogatories (Round 2) of David Amos.pdf
118K View as HTML Scan and download

04-NBP Responses to Interrogatories (Round 2) of J.D. Irving Limited (JDI).pdf
567K View as HTML Scan and download

05-NBP Responses to Interrogatories (Round 2) of Utilities Municipal (UM).pdf
290K View as HTML Scan and download
 
 
 
 

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