Commissioner suggests Pepco’s rate hike application is “deficient” on its face, leans towards denying it outright

Commissioner Richard Beverly is unimpressed with Pepco’s attempts to hike rates on DC customers, as per usual. Since Emile Thompson’s departure from the PSC, Beverly’s vote now holds far more power on the two-person Commission, especially as Pepco’s redo rate case is scheduled for November. (Pepco’s original 2024 rate hike was vacated by the DC Court of Appeals after the PSC violated standard procedure; Beverly voted to not approve that rate hike as well.)

In a public letter from August, Commissioner Beverly noted his opinion that Pepco’s current high distribution rates have no legal standing, which should trigger refunds to all DC customers that have been overpaying since January 2025. In addition, he reiterated his distaste for Pepco’s multiyear rate plan (MRP), which has hiked rates nearly every year since 2021. Per Beverly, not only are not in the public interest, but the process and formulas are opaque and prevent the PSC from properly regulating DC’s corporate monopoly utilities.

In a complaining response, Pepco misrepresented Beverly’s stance on their attempts to hike bills during an affordability crisis. The monopoly utility grasps at straws to claim it’s a violation of due process to deny their faulty rate hike application: a stance that willfully misunderstands the timeline, standards, and powers of utility regulation and the Public Service Commission.

Beverly notes this. In response, he is open to still holding an evidentiary hearing this November, even with only two commissioners. However, he notes he “strongly opposed to approving an application that is deficient on its face (as should be the view of any serious regulatory body)”: a warning sign to Pepco that their current multiyear rate plan application is probably dead in the water.

Commissioner Beverly has been abundantly clear through several years of ruling that Pepco’s multiyear rate plans are not in the public’s benefit. They raise rates unjustly, allow Pepco to unduly profit, and overall provide an inefficient, unfair process of ratemaking in DC. Now that the useless, corporate-captured Emile Thompson is off the PSC, Pepco has to contend with a regulator actually interested in doing his job and looking out for the public benefit.