LANSING ? After vigorous scrutiny from Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel?s team,?the Upper Peninsula Power Company (UPPCO) has voluntarily withdrawn its request for a permanent waiver. UPPCO had sought to count multiple outages during catastrophic conditions as a single outage, which would have resulted in fewer repetitive outage credits being issued under the amended Service Quality Rules (SQRs) implemented last year by the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC). In April, Nessel intervened, deeming UPPCO?s request unreasonable and unnecessary.?

In response to UPPCO?s move to withdraw, Nessel requested that MPSC Staff ensure that UPPCO now has effective processes in place to promptly evaluate all outages eligible for outage credits under the SQRs and to ensure timely issuance of these credits. She also asked MSPC Staff to determine whether UPPCO has issued billing credits in a timely fashion since April 10, 2023, as legally required. If billing credits have not been issued in a timely manner, Nessel urged UPPCO to provide supplemental credits for each month of delayed issuance. The Attorney General?s review of this waiver request bore reasonable doubts as to whether UPPCO has issued billing credits within 90 days of each qualifying outage, as required by the SQRs. ?

?While I am glad that UPPCO has withdrawn its request, I remain deeply concerned about the company?s compliance with the outage credits rules,? Nessel said. ?As the state regulator of UPPCO, the MPSC must carefully oversee the company?s adherence, and all audit results should be made public. If UPPCO fails to issue bill credits in a timely manner, they must compensate affected customers. Just as UPPCO charges late fees on customers for overdue bills, the company should face consequences for failing to issue the legally required outage credits on time.??

In her request, Nessel emphasized that UPPCO should not later attempt to recover these supplemental credit costs in future rate cases. The final resolution of the matter now resides with the MPSC.?

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