Delaware Public Service Commission Releases

Final Report on Delmarva Power’s Electric Supply Auction

            Today, the Delaware Public Service Commission (PSC) released The Final Report assessing the conduct and results of Delmarva Power’s electric Standard Offer Service (SOS) reverse auction process for the 2018-19 procurement year; the PSC was assisted by its technical consultant, The Liberty Consulting Group. Delmarva Power successfully secured all of the outstanding needs for full-requirement service for their electric customers who have not chosen an alternative electric supplier.

            The procurement process used a reverse auction process that relies upon bidders’ awareness of the actions of other bidders in an attempt to drive prices down for both Delmarva Power and customers. Of the ten companies interested in this year’s Request For Proposals (RFP), seven were eligible to bid: six were actual bidders and five won a portion of Delmarva Power’s SOS needs. The winning suppliers were AEP, DTE, Exelon, Hartree and Nextera.

            Delmarva held two separate auctions, one in November 2018 and one in January 2019and acquired approximately 681 MWs, an increase of 264 MW from last year. The average winning bid for the Residential Small Commercial and Industrial (RSCI) 1-year contract was approximately 11.5% lower than last year. For the Medium (MGS), Large (LGS), and Primary (GS-P) general service customers, the average winning bids ranged from +0.6% to -10.9% compared to last year’s bids.

Based on the bid prices alone, the approximate change in the average monthly bill by customer class is as follows:

• 3.1% reduction for RSCI class;
• 2.35% reduction for the SGS class;
• 7.35% reduction for the MGS class;
• 6.5% reduction for the LGS class; and,
• 0.1% increase in the GS-P class.

These are only energy costs and do not include various other costs that are subject to change on the bills. The full version of the Technical Consultant’s Final Report can be found on the PSC’s website at https://depsc.delaware.gov/standard-offer-service/