3/21/2024 0 Comments National grid upstate login![]() As of April, the average past-due amount owed by 76,000 low-income National Grid customers was $1,139. The same is true in National Grid’s Upstate territory. More than $600 million is due from small commercial customers.Īcross the state, nearly one household in six is at least two months behind on utility bills. Of that, $1.1 billion is owed by residential utility customers who don’t qualify for low-income programs. The special charge will add about $1.50 a month for a typical National Grid household with gas and electric service.īut it leaves a huge overdue bill – roughly $1.7 billion. ![]() Money collected from that surcharge also will be used to pay down the debt of low-income households. Separately, utilities began charging another new fee July 1 to compensate for all the late payment penalties they were not allowed to charge during the pandemic. 1, will add less than 0.5 percent to residential bills - for example, about $1 on a monthly bill of $200. State officials say the surcharge, which begins Aug. Most of the rest – about $180 million – will be covered by a new surcharge paid by utility ratepayers. The utility companies are contributing $36 million. State legislators appropriated $250 million in the budget another $100 million or so is expected to come from the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, which is using money from its rental assistance program to pay some of the bills. The state will tap a variety of sources to pay for it. Utilities have agreed not to terminate service for any low-income customers at least until Sept. Those households will be notified that their overdue bills accumulated through May 1 of this year will be paid off, even debts incurred before Covid-19 arrived. Working with the governor and legislature, the Public Service Commission last month put together a plan to pay off the $587 million in unpaid utility bills racked up by low-income households that qualify for utility programs for the poor. In May, utilities started shutting off residential customers for nonpayment for the first time in more than two years. There’s pressure to find a solution quickly. Without some resolution, utility companies warn, all those unpaid bills could set off a torrent of service terminations, impede economic recovery and spur utilities to seek rate increases to cover uncollectable bills. In the two years after Covid-19 arrived in March 2020, unpaid utility bills nearly tripled from $794 million to $2.3 billion statewide. The scale of the debt crisis is something never seen before. “But they are definitely looking at the people … who aren’t eligible for any of the assistance programs.’’ “Are they going to completely wipe it out? I don’t know,’’ said Bill Ferris, a legislative representative at AARP, one of the groups in the discussion. The PSC has pulled together representatives from utilities, state agencies and consumer groups to come up with a way to pay off some or all the debt. ![]() If the commission chooses to pay off all or most of their debts, ratepayers are likely to pick up at least some of the cost. The PSC is looking to help those customers, too, in a second phase of the bailout. Other residential customers and small businesses account for three-quarters of the record-setting $2.3 billion in unpaid bills that piled up during the pandemic. ![]() But the debts of customers with known low incomes are not the biggest problem. ![]()
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