The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Thursday adopted a motion to enhance a proposed settlement concerning widespread consumer billing issues that impacted customers of PPL Electric Utilities through much of 2023.

The commission voted 3-2 to add a $1 million contribution to the company’s hardship fund to the proposed joint settlement between the PUC’s independent Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement and PPL.

The PUC said the additional directive came from the analysis of more than 160 comments that were filed by consumers, advocates, and other concerned parties, offering perspective about the impact of PPL’s billing issues and providing input about the proposed settlement.

The $1 million contribution to the company’s customer hardship fund, in lieu of the civil penalty included in the original settlement proposal.

Directing PPL to donate $1 million to its Hardship Fund will help PPL customers with income at or below 250 percent of the federal poverty level to pay their electric bills, keep their electric service on, and receive referrals to other assistance programs.

In addition to the hardship fund contribution, the motion from Chairman DeFrank and Commissioner Zerfuss also modifies the joint settlement to require more detailed reporting on the cause and impact of PPL’s billing problems, and other steps to enhance transparency and consumer protection, including:

• A deeper analysis of PPL’s billing issues, including a root cause analysis and report on that analysis, which will be provided to the Commission, Pennsylvania’s consumer and small business advocates, and the Public Utility Law Project.

• Additional refunds and relief by PPL for any customer identified by the root cause analysis as not being properly addressed.

• Greater transparency by PPL regarding how customer balances and terminations, including whether refunds and foregone bills sufficiently addressed the harm to consumers; whether PPL’s six-month termination moratorium during the billing issues was sufficient time to help all impacted customers; and the impact on the eligibility of some customers for utility assistance programs such as LIHEAP.

• Revisions to the formula used by PPL to generate estimated bills.

• Details concerning how PPL calculated the $1 million in refunds which have already been provided to consumers.

• A specific timeline for implementation of corrective actions included in the settlement.

The settlement also includes a series of corrective actions in response to PPL’s billing issues, and PPL’s voluntarily agreement to absorb more than $16 million in additional costs related to rectifying their billing issues.

The settlement also makes it clear that none of the PPL costs related to rectifying the billing issues will be recovered from any ratepayers.

PPL and I&E have 20 days during which either party may elect to withdraw from the joint settlement, as modified by the Commission. If either or both chooses to withdraw, then the underlying settlement agreement becomes void, and the matter will be returned to I&E for further action.

The settlement proposed by I&E and PPL follows an investigation launched by the PUC in early 2023, in response to PPL billing system malfunctions which impacted bills for nearly 800,000 customer accounts. Those system malfunctions resulted in unusually high or low estimated bills, missing monthly bills, and/or bills that did not include any supplier charges or only included partial charges.

The billing issues were exacerbated by the lack of adequate customer service support resulting in consumers being unable to reach PPL Call Center representatives to discuss their billing concerns.