The New York Public Service Commission is penalizing the Rochester region's two largest utility providers.

The state says it is docking Rochester Gas and Electric and New York Electric and Gas for "failing to meet reliability and customer service targets."

According to the PSC, "NYSEG and RG&E each failed to meet all four of their respective metric targets." That means the state will cut $5.9 million in customer revenue from RG&E and $8.72 million from NYSEG.

Public Service Commission Chair Rory M. Christian issued this statement:

“The commission’s rate design provides carrots and sticks based on utility performance. In 2022, almost a quarter of those utilities fell short of their legal requirements in certain areas. The commission will aggressively work to ensure lagging utilities improve performance. Maintaining reliability and ensuring good customer service is required for utilities, and the Commission holds them accountable when they fail to meet our standards.”

RG&E and NYSEG issued the following statement in response:

“The Public Service Commission’s revenue adjustment announcement today reflects customer service and reliability performance, in which NYSEG and RG&E continue to make significant improvements and investments.  

In fact, the Companies have already made significant improvements to customer service, drastically lessening customer wait times above the required metric, improving the accuracy of billing, and hiring hundreds of new staff to reverse the severe Pandemic-related staffing impacts on monthly meter reading and billing.  

The Companies also continue improvements on reliability, replacing tens of thousands aging poles and other equipment that contribute to outages, which impacted 600K homes across the state in 2022 alone. These are very real actions the Companies are taking daily and that are outlined in the joint rate proposal with PSC.”

According to a representative for the companies, the revenue adjustments have already been included in their rate case proposal that has been filed with the PSC.

RG&E and NYSEG are subsidiaries of AVANGRID.

The state says it assessed nearly 10 times more penalties to a half-dozen utilities in New York this year compared to the previous year.

PSC fines RG&E, NYSEG by Keegan Trunick on Scribd