Rules vary on when it's OK to cut power

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Tough choices in a tough economy come to the fore. Cold showers in the morning? Winter tires instead of winter coats? The answers can mean the difference between having heat or having food.

The Dec. 11 death of 89-year-old Elizabeth Verdin after power was cut to her Greenville home has shined a light on how utilities in the winter disconnect customers who can't or don't pay their heating bills.

Duke Power said the company does an admirable job looking out for the safety of its customers during the winter and is "going above and beyond" what South Carolina law requires.

State lawmakers are now examining those regulations.

What they'll find, according to a review by The Greenville News, is a patchwork of policies adopted by the state's utilities and laws that fall short of what other states do to protect their most vulnerable residents — including the elderly, those with health problems and children.

In South Carolina, utilities are bound by law to provide heat during the winter only when a customer can prove that a disability presents a dangerous health threat to a member of the household if service was cut.

There are no regulations protecting those who simply cannot pay or the children who live in those homes.

There is no statewide standard that utilities must follow spelling out how a customer can address a delinquent bill to stave off disconnection in the winter.

The temperatures at which South Carolina utilities say they won't cut service during the coldest months of the year vary greatly and can leave homes without heat even when temperatures drop into the teens.

"We've got to do something," said state Sen. Ralph Anderson, D-Greenville, who along with Republican state senators Verne Smith and David Thomas have pledged to introduce legislation.

Following Verdin's death, Duke Power suspended disconnecting power to any of its 2 million customers until it finishes review of its winter disconnection policies, said company spokesman Tim Pettit.

Other utilities are following Duke's lead. Piedmont Natural Gas will review its winter disconnection policies, said spokesman David Trusty, though he said Piedmont has no plans to suspend service cut-offs.

Crystal Rhodes, for one, is thankful that Duke decided to temporarily halt disconnections when they did.

Hours before Duke announced it would suspend disconnections on Dec. 16, Rhodes said a company representative warned her they were coming to cut her family's power later that day.

Each month, she said, the family of four barely makes ends. Last month, the family received an $842 bill from four years ago that Rhodes said she never knew went unpaid.

She said she worries less about the safety of herself and her husband than about exposing her 6- and 2-year-olds to overnight temperatures that have dropped into the teens.

"They shouldn't be able to cut people's power off when it's so cold," she said. "People can freeze to death." Not enough moneyA number of states have laws on the books that spell out when heat providers can cut electricity and gas for nonpayment in the winter.

Georgia, for instance, requires electric and gas utilities offer customers a reasonable monthly payment plan between November 15 and March 15, said Bill Edge, a spokesman for the Georgia Public Service Commission.

Customer who accept and abide by a payment plan that pays off the outstanding bill by the following October cannot have their power cut off, Edge said.

Illinois goes a step further by capping the percentage of the overdue bill customers must pay up front during its moratorium between Dec. 1 and March 31.

In both Georgia and Illinois, a customer must be offered a deferred-payment plan during the winter regardless of past history.

Past history is a main contributor to the caseload of the state Office of Regulatory Staff, said April Sharpe, manager of consumer affairs for the office that handles customer disputes with utilities.

As it stands, Sharpe said, the only South Carolina law banning winter cutoffs between Nov. 1 and April 15 requires customers demonstrate they can't pay and a physician's written statement that cutting service would pose a "dangerous" health threat.

Pettit said Duke Power works with customers to settle their bills because it's in the best interest of the company not to disconnect customers.

Pettit said the company has a policy of directing customers to social service agencies that can help with financial assistance, some of which comes from the Share The Warmth program. Duke Power and Piedmont Natural Gas contribute to the program.

But SHARE, one of those social service agencies, is strapped for money to give out, said Willis Crosby, president of SHARE.

SHARE recently received its disbursement of Share The Warmth money. Crosby said that on many days in December the agency received a single cash donation — sometimes as little as $175, or enough to cover one family's electric or gas bill.

"This is a very critical time, because we're having this cold spell," Crosby said.

Even where there are moratoriums on winter cutoffs, there comes a day of reckoning for customers who have unpaid bills.

That is vividly illustrated in Wisconsin, where lawmakers cut out any of the guesswork during the winter months by banning disconnections for any customer from Nov. 1 to April 15 regardless of temperature, the customer's circumstances or their ability to pay.

The law ensures that no one will go without power in one of the coldest parts of the country.

But as soon as April 16 rolls around, energy companies start disconnecting customers, sometimes as many as 300 a day, said Beth Martin, a spokeswoman for We Energies that serves 2 million electric and gas customers.

She said it's not uncommon to cut off electricity to 30,000 delinquent customers in the first month after the moratorium is lifted.

The moratorium makes it possible for customers to let bills pile up, pushing them deeper and deeper into debt.

Last winter, We Energies saw its backlog of uncollected payments swell from $126 million to $172 million, and the company estimates that more than 40,000 people are able to pay their bills but don't during the blanket moratorium.

The price tag for the program is large and is passed on to the customer in the form of rate hikes, she said.

"Customers who are paying on time end up paying for those who are not," Martin said. How cold is too cold?In South Carolina, there is wide disparity in how cold it must be before a heat provider decides it won't cut anybody's service.

In the case of Duke, if the day's average temperature is forecasted to drop to 32 degrees or below, the utility's policy is to not cut power to any customer, Pettit said.

The average temperature takes into account the entire day, so that even if temperatures dip into the 20s, the average temperature might not drop to the freezing point. So far in the month of December, two days — Dec. 14 and 20 — have met Duke's standard, according to the National Weather Service.

Lows have dropped below 32 degrees on 12 days, however. On Dec. 11, the day Verdin died, the low reached 36 though the average for the day was 45, Weather Service records show.

Pettit said that daytime heat makes the nighttime temperature within a home bearable.

"That home is slowly releasing that heat energy during the day, so that's why we're doing the average thing," Pettit said. "The fact that it may get to 31 degrees during the night, if it's getting up to 50 degrees during the day, then that resident is not getting incredibly cold during the nighttime hours. Or as cold."

Pettit said the temperature threshold is one of the policy aspects the company will consider changing, along with the lengths it goes to contact customers before cutting power.

The policy of Piedmont Natural Gas is to cease disconnections if the temperature does not rise above 32 degrees at any point during the day or over a 24-hour period, said Headen Thomas, a company spokesman.

Piedmont will review all policies, spokesman Trusty said, but he declined to be more specific.

Laurens Electrical Cooperative, which serves 47,000 customers, uses no set temperature threshold and relies instead on a "judgment call" by company officials, said Jim Donahoo, the cooperative's director of marketing.

In contrast, Georgia law mandates that an electric company can't cut power if the low is forecasted to drop below 32 degrees over a 24-hour period, regardless of daytime temperatures, Edge said. The same rule applies to gas companies, except the window is 48 hours.

In Oklahoma, utilities can't disconnect service to any customer if daytime temperatures are below 32 degrees or if nighttime temperatures drop below 20 degrees. Also, the Oklahoma Public Service Commission has the power to order a ban on all disconnections if weather conditions seem too dangerous.