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Regulatory commission cuts Entergy Arkansas' rate increase request Saturday, Jun 16, 2007 By Jason Wiest Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - The state Public Service Commission on Friday denied Entergy Arkansas' $106.5 million rate increase request and instead ordered the state's largest electric utility to reduce rates by $5.67 million. In the 131 page opinion, the PSC denied the utility's request to recover from ratepayers expenses that included tickets to sporting events and concerts, golf balls and golf tournament expenses and dinners and alcohol to entertain political figures. The regulatory panel also reduced the level of incentive pay and stock options requested by the utility by more than $21 million. The commission approved the utility's request to recover costs relating to projects and organizations that promote new technologies and research and development investment. In the order, the commission stated that it wanted to establish a policy to promote "new technologies which could provide more efficient utility operation" that will lead to "direct ratepayer benefit." The order allows for the recovery of the cost of Entergy Arkansas' recently deployed "broadband over power lines" project, which is designed to study the feasibility of utilizing this new technology to enhance service delivery, outage detection and service restoration, as well as the potential future deployment of cost-effective and efficient demand response technology and advanced metering capabilities. The commission also reiterated its intent to continue to fight a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission order that requires Entergy Arkansas to make payments to the other Entergy operating companies to "roughly" balance production costs at plants throughout Entergy's four-state service area. In December 2005, the commission found that Entergy's plants in Arkansas, which are powered mostly by coal and nuclear reactors, operate more cost-efficiently than Entergy plants in other states, which rely mostly on more expensive natural gas. Entergy Arkansas has 680,000 customers in 63 Arkansas counties. |
