In an interview with Variety last Saturday, CUC assistant executive director Alan Fletcher said, “We have continually dropped in the amount of power that we sell.”
He also said that this decrease also translates to their water and wastewater revenue as well.
Fletcher attributed this decline in revenue to the state of the economy.
“With residents and businesses struggling, it’s something that we just have to hope that we could work through together to get the CNMI up on its feet,” he said.
Asked if the decrease in the volume of consumers affects the base rate, Fletcher said, “Without a doubt because all our rates and the actions that even the CPUC takes are based on certain projections and certain budgets. And the base rate calculations figure so much kilowatt hour sales and so many customers within that base. When those numbers are reduced, it affects us — our revenues are down.”
For Fletcher, “these are monies that are just critical for our operations. We are non-profit. Every dollar we make goes right into our operations.”
He told Variety Saturday that CUC is planning an emergency filing for the next session in January.
He said the utilities agency has been impacted not only by the decrease in volume sales but also by the doubling of retirement contributions with the new employer rate of 60.8686 becoming effective last Oct. 1.
“That’s a huge impact on us,” he said.
Variety learned that the utilities agency’s figures were heading south from FY 2010 to FY 2011.
It saw an 8.23 percent decrease in total volume kWh sales from 254,906,034 in 2010 down to 233,935,181.
Total number of customers dropped from 15,460 to 14,446, a 6.56 percent increase.
There were 921 less residential customers in FY’2011, from 11,723 customers in 2010 to 10,802 in 2011.
There was a 7,629,028 kWh drop in consumption from 76,985,208 to 69,356,180.
As of the last fiscal year, there were 885 government accounts compared to 891 in FY’10.
There was a 3,371,486 decline in kWh used from 46,862,225 to 43,490,739.
If in 2010 there were 2,846 commercial accounts, with a total consumption of 131,058,601 kWh, there were 87 less commercial accounts in FY’11 with total consumption at 121,088,262 kWh.
As for consumption, there was an average of 3,825 kWh used per commercial customer and this went down to 3,596 kWh per commercial customer.
In FY’10, government accounts averaged 4,350 kWh per customer and this dropped to 4,102 kWh per customer in FY’ 11, a -5.71 percent drop
The average residential customer use in FY’10 was 545 kWh but this slid to 515 kWh per customer in 2011.
