Alaska Approves Permanent Tariff

The Regulatory Commission of Alaska has approved an electric utility’s proposed rates and rules for electric vehicle (EV) charging service. The new schedules had been presented by Alaska Electric Light & Power Company (AEL&P) to replace an experimental EV charging rate that had been approved in 2011 but had recently expired.

The existing tariff allowed up to 10 residential customers to participate in the program, paying the peak season energy rate for demandmetered residential service when the customers charge their EVs during the off-peak hours of 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., but paying the non-demand-metered residential rates when charging their EVs during other hours. For that nine-hour offpeak time period of 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., the utility’s program also provided a per kilowatt-hour (kWh) incentive, depending on the season, to charge EVs during the nonpeak hours. Enrollees were required to install and maintain a dedicated, separately metered EV charging circuit.

Based on the results of the EV charging pilot, the new permanent tariff schedule expands participant eligibility to include small commer cial customers and all residential customers owning a battery-driven or extended-range EV. However, the new charging incentive period is shortened by two hours, now ending at 5:00 in the morning.

Customers charging EVs during the incentive period will pay the seasonally applicable energy rate. Depending on the season and a participant’s customer class, the revised rate schedules also provide an incentive to charge EVs during a specified period. The commission acknowledged that the new incentive period rates were developed on the basis of the cost of providing energy to demandmetered customers, not the cost of providing service to EV customers taking energy during low-usage time periods.

The commission stated that while the new rates might not precisely meet the pricing objective of rates matching cost of service, AEL&P had noticed that under the prior tariff, consumers had shifted approximately 70% of their average daily 10-kWh EV charging requirement to the incentive time period. Thus, in the commission’s view, the new incentive rates should result in additional load shifting to better achieve the pricing objective of optimal use. Re Alaska Electric Light & Power Co., U-17-002, Order No. 5, Oct. 4, 2017 (Alaska R.C.).