State regulators have ordered Puget Sound Energy to return $52.7 million in credits to current customers from the 2010 sale of its Jefferson County infrastructure to the county public utility district.
Jefferson County residents and the PUD will not see a penny.
The state Utilities and Transportation Commission ordered Bellevue-based PSE on Sept. 11 to more equally distribute proceeds from the sale between customers and investors.
In October 2013, PSE, which is a private, investor-owned company, proposed that the company be allowed to retain all but about $15 million of the $109 million in sale proceeds, according to the commission’s order.
According to the commission, the company said it was entitled to 100 percent of the gain on the sale but proposed to return roughly $15 million to current customers as a “voluntary sharing of the proceeds of this sale.”
Commission staff, the public counsel section of the state Attorney General’s Office and the Industrial Customers of Northwest Utilities contested the plan and proposed a larger share for customers.
Based on legal precedent and long-standing practice, the commission ordered PSE to return approximately half the sale funds to customers and to establish a monthly bill credit to repay customers by 2018.
Current PSE customers will begin seeing the credits on their bills starting this fall, the commission said.
In November 2008, Jefferson County voters approved Proposition 1, authorizing the PUD — which then provided only water and sewer service — to provide electric power in the county.
On June 11, 2010, an agreement was completed to transfer PSE’s assets in Jefferson County to the PUD for $103 million — an amount later increased to $109 million.
PSE currently provides electricity to more than 1.1 million customers living in eight counties: King, Pierce, Island, Kitsap, Kittitas, Skagit, Whatcom and Thurston.
The state Utilities and Transportation Commission regulates the rates and services of telecommunications companies, investor-owned electric utilities, natural gas and water companies, garbage-collection haulers, household-goods movers and charter-bus companies, commercial ferries, pipeline companies and a low-level radioactive waste repository.
The commission does not regulate public utility districts or city-owned energy systems.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.