(Photo: Hugh Jackson/Nevada Current)
NV Energy, which balked just weeks ago at fully reimbursing overcharged customers, is reversing course and proposing to pay $63 million to more than 100,000 residential customers it’s overcharged since 2002, the company announced in a news release Tuesday.
The utility, which owed customers a total of $65.4 million, according to state regulators, initially offered to reimburse a portion of affected customers just $2.5 million, claiming regulations limited their obligation to repay customers for just six months of overcharges.
Just weeks ago, the company upped its offer to reimburse customers for overcharges back to 2017, adding the offer “substantially exceeds the Companies’ legal obligations and ensures prompt compensation for impacted customers.”
Court action on the part of state regulators, NV Energy asserted, would delay reimbursement.
On Tuesday, NV Energy called its latest proposal “the right thing to do” and thanked the Public Utility Commission for its help “in developing a resolution that makes current customers whole again.”
The offer “ensures that compensation is provided expeditiously” following PUC approval, NV Energy said.
The utility initially acknowledged overcharging some 60,000 customers by roughly $17 million, the Current reported in May, but the company later found through an audit it had overcharged another 20,000 “previously unidentified ‘multi-family accounts’ for an undisclosed amount.”
An investigation by PUC staff discovered more than 100,000 customers were affected by the overcharging, which was caused by the misclassification of multi-family units as single-family homes, which pay a higher rate.
Additional details will be available on the company’s website in the coming days, the news release said.
