You might have heard about the $600 million in rebates for Entergy ratepayers that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered last week. But if you haven’t, this press release will brighten your day if you’re a customer of theirs…

Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta announced today that customers of Entergy Louisiana, LLC, and Entergy New Orleans, LLC, will receive almost $600 million in credits next year due to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s determination that the utility giant overcharged consumers for over two decades.

Skrmetta (R – Metairie) said, “I am proud of our Commission staff.  The staff carefully and continually monitors billing by all utility companies and the charges they pass onto consumers.  It’s our way of scrutinizing the receipt before leaving the store. When our staff sounded alarms and pointed the Commissioners to Entergy’s overcharging, we took the appropriate action and were notified by the FERC that our action was merited.”

FERC required System Energy to refund approximately $150 million as the result of overcharging customers for alleged renewals of a sale/leaseback arrangement that ended in 2015.  The LPSC, New Orleans Council, and Arkansas Public Service Commission (“APSC”) estimate the damages for the failure to reduce System Energy’s rate base for tax collections to be more than $850 million.  The amount distributed to customers of Entergy Louisiana, Entergy New Orleans, and Entergy Arkansas would be about $510 million.

Skrmetta added, “We are a watchdog agency.  Our consumers can rest assured that through the LPSC’s regulation of utilities, we will continue to make detailed monitoring, auditing, and recovering of credits a high priority. This victory, on behalf of the public, is another step forward to secure additional credits and further establish acceptable behavior by regulated companies.”

The Louisiana Public Service Commission is an independent regulatory agency dedicated to serving the public interest by assuring safe, reliable, and reasonably-priced services from public utilities and motor carriers.  The LPSC, reaffirmed in Article IV, Section 21 of the 1974 Constitution of the State of Louisiana, consists of five elected Commissioners who serve overlapping terms of six years.  The Commission has jurisdiction over certain publicly owned utilities providing electric, water, wastewater, natural gas, and telecommunication services, as well as all the electric cooperatives in Louisiana.  It does not regulate Entergy New Orleans, which is regulated by the New Orleans City Council under its Home Rule Charter.

That’s a nice little Christmas present for the folks. Admittedly, it’s not going to amount to much more than a couple hundred dollars per household to be paid out over a few monthly bills. But this is only one of several lawsuits the PSC is involved in on behalf of ratepayers, which means Entergy is going to be playing Unwilling Santa for lots of us for a while over the fact they’ve overcharged customers over the years.

What’s interesting is that Louisiana has had some of the lowest electric rates in the country all during that time – until lately, when the state has been more middle-of-the-pack in that regard. Infrastructure costs coming out of Hurricane Ida had something to do with that, as did natural gas prices and other fuel costs which are highly attributable to the Biden administration and its stupid New Green Deal policies.

We’re likely going to be paying more attention to PSC issues in the coming months. With New Green Deal neocommunist Davante Lewis getting elected thanks to Hard Left out-of-state money bankrolling his victory over Lambert Boissiere III, that body now has a clear split between Skrmetta and the two other Republicans (Mike Francis and Craig Greene) on one side and Lewis and fellow Democrat Foster Campbell on the other. Boissiere was often a sane vote on the PSC; Lewis will almost never be.

That’ll mean all three Republicans will have to stick together. We’ll see whether they do.