During Governor Matt Meyer's State of the State address this month, he called out Delaware’s largest energy distributor for its request to increase customer rates.
Delmarva submitted an application to increase its base rate by $67.8 million in December.
Meyer called the company’s request “unacceptable” and asked the Public Service Commission to deny Delmarva.
Delmarva’s Vice President Government and External Affairs, Marcus Beal, defended his company’s request. He said Delmarva, a subsidiary of Exelon, needs to maintain reliable service.
"If we are not getting fair rate case outcomes, reliability suffers," he said. "We can see longer and more frequent outages, and quite frankly, the grid can become unsafe."
Demand on energy systems is up nationally, as more data centers come online, he said. And his company has to replace aging infrastructure.
When asked directly about Meyer’s comments in his State of the tate and their tone, Beal said no one wants high energy bills.
“We're all in this together," he said. "We're not politicians. Our job, what our company is focused on, is making sure that we are making the right investments in the grid to provide reliable and safe electricity and gas to our customers. We have to remain focused on that.”
Beal added Delmarva is an energy distributor, but does not control the amount of energy available or generated by the regional grid, the 13 state PJM network that includes Delaware.
"The folks that build power plants or own power plants, there's no incentive for them to build more," Beal said. "...because our logo is on that bill, we're taking a lot of the heat for an industry that is making a lot of money and not building more power plants."
Three-fifths of power used by Delaware is generated out of state.
According to a PMJ spokesperson, over the past two years, a national "electricity supply and demand imbalance" pushed the capacity of its network. It does not set retail rates for customers, but its wholesale costs are a part of electric and gas bills.
A number of gas and coal plants retired in the last five years. PMJ said new sources of energy are not being built quickly enough to replace these.
Delmarva is ready to collaborate with the state on bringing energy prices down, Beal said. It "has the expertise" to build power plants, depending on state lawmaker interest.
Delaware lawmakers passed a law against Delmarva generating its on power in 1999, in order to prevent a monopoly.
Beal added the legislature passed laws in the last year that will improve grid reliability, like battery storage pilot projects, which "can help take some of the pressure off of those supply costs."
Beal said to sustain Delaware's grid in the short term, it could invest in solar projects. But building energy supply like gas, "that takes some time."
Beal added, "We do need interim solutions right now that will help immediately take some of the pressure off our customers."
