Weather Deferral Account – Rider “W”
ATCO Gas, a division of ATCO Gas and Pipelines Ltd. (“ATCO Gas”) applied for approval of recovery rates established from the balance (as of April 30, 2015) of its weather deferral account of ATCO Gas South in its southern service area.
ATCO Gas’ weather deferral accounts (“WDA”) allows ATCO Gas to manage revenue risk to the utility from material differences in actual temperature compared to forecast. Decision 2008-113 originally approved the WDA to be trued up using a 12-month WDA rider for when the account balance exceeded $7 million at April 30th of a particular year, representing approximately a +/- 10 per cent variance from the normalized weather forecast. ATCO Gas had previously received AUC approvals to dispose of a refund amount of $7.245 million and $13.318 million in Decision 2009-093 and Decision 2011-313 respectively as Rider “W”.
ATCO Gas submitted that the southern WDA balance as of April 30, 2015 was in a recovery position of approximately $12.591 million, recoverable from ATCO Gas South customers. ATCO Gas submitted that the impacts on customers would be:
(a) A $0.130 per gigajoule charge for low-use customers for an average total of $17.00 annually; and
(b) A $0.130 per gigajoule charge for mid-use customers for an average total of $390.00 annually.
ATCO had originally requested that Rider W be effective from August 1, 2015 to July 31, 2016, later updating its request for a recovery period from September 1, 2015 to August 31, 2016.
The AUC held that ATCO’s proposed methodology of calculating the Rider W charge for the WDA was reasonable, and was consistent with previous approvals.
The AUC was also satisfied that the increase in cost to customers would not result in rate shock for customers.
The AUC therefore approved ATCO Gas’ south WDA Rider W for implementation from September 1, 2015 to August 31, 2016.
