From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made earlier this month with the release of an independent audit of our Genie.

And first, here's how my news colleague Brian Sharp reported some of it.

Quote, an independent audit of our Genie and Nyseg paints a picture of ineffective governance that prioritizes parent company of Ingrid's corporate earnings over the interests of New York ratepayers.

While not surprising to critics, auditors detailed a surprising dearth of local planning and controls, including when it comes to compliance with state regulations and a near-total absence of local decision making.

End quote.

Now, RGA and Nyseg have taken issue with the audit in several ways.

First, the utilities point out that the audit focused on 2018 through 2023, a rather long period that marked the pandemic and left out the last year plus.

And so our Genie, for example, says the reporting on this audit is not telling an updated story and what they are doing to serve the region.

The audit comes at a time when some members of local government are reigniting efforts to create a locally owned utility.

Last week, Rochester City Council member Mary Lucien said that our genie has failed the community and local government should take over.

But a year ago, the Monroe County Legislature voted against doing a study to potentially move forward with a local utility.

And Rochester Mayor Malik Evans says he opposes having the city pay for such a study on its own.

So for the moment, a publicly owned power company does not appear to have the votes in local government.

We asked our genie to join us to not only respond to the audit, but to talk to the community about what is going on locally.

And we're glad to have this.

Our Kim Herman, senior vice president of public and regulatory affairs at Avangrid.

Kim, thank you for being with us.

It's nice to be here.

And Christine Alexander, vice president of customer service for Genie and Nyseg.

Thank you for being here as well.

Good to be here.

So the audit to certainly to my eye is pretty critical of our genie and Nyseg.

And I know that you both feel it is missing a number of things.

So, Kim, I want to give you some space first, if you want to elaborate on how you see the audit and maybe what what you want the listeners to understand.

Sure.

And in fact, I have experience.

You know, I worked for the Public Service Commission for 16 years.

I've been on that side doing an audit with an independent company, to look at utilities.

And the whole purpose of the audit is to find something.

I mean, that's the design.

It's to have people come in to take a fresh look at a company, to identify areas of improvement, things that we could do better, things that create, efficiencies for the customer.

so it is designed to help us improve on service and operations.

And I think what I, you know, what was troubling in this audit, though, as you mentioned, is that it really picked up at a time when there were a lot of things going on with the pandemic.

we were in a rate plan that had very little funding for tree trimming and operational needs and customer service needs.

And so I think when you look at the performance of the company, you see that in fact, in 23, we had the best five year performance for reliability.

Christine's going to talk about customer service.

So, you know, we're taken a good look at the audit.

There are recommendations that we will implement.

But we think with respect to governance, with respect to, gas safety, some of these things, they really miss the mark.

And we are very factual about pointing out where we think they miss the mark, where we think, in fact, that's a great recommendation.

Let's work to implement it.

What's an example or what are some examples of where you think they missed the mark?

So I think on gas safety, on the gas call out leak time.

they said, hey, you don't dispatch crews or report a gas leak fast enough in the system for reporting when we know about the leak and responding to it.

Well, here's the thing, Evan.

We actually have a letter from the head of the gas safety unit at the Department of Public Service confirming how we compute that time, how we calculate the time from the call.

And so they just run.

So they're wrong.

How do they get that if if they are wrong.

How did they get that wrong.

Well, when you bring in an auditor who doesn't really know the company or even new work, I would say this is, Calif based auditor with members of the team in different states, including Texas.

And they come in and they try to look at the information.

And one of the things that we found, in fact, was that unlike the last time we had an audit, because we had not at five years previous to that.

Right.

they that audit did almost 160 interviews this time around.

Do you have an audit, state auditor, 40 interviews.

So we actually point out in our response, and I think we share that with you, some of the places where we think just failing to understand the information we were providing could have been clarified by a conversation.

And we're going to provide that documentation to the commission.

What's an example of a part of the audit that you said, hey, this is fair and we're going to work on this.

So I think one of the things that was right, I don't I don't agree with necessarily the conclusion that we prioritize avangrid over Nyseg or G&A, but I think there was a point raised about how are you project planning, how are you controlling?

And we made that shift in fact, in the last year and a half, we have moved projects planning into a New York based team.

Christine, you're going to hear from is right here in Rochester.

She reports up to Trish Nielsen.

So we're we're looking at the other thing is we also have put out and we're going to hire very soon two presidents, one for Rochester and one for Nyseg.

So one for our Jeanie.

They'll be based here.

So we're making this move as our as the in needs for investment in our infrastructure grow and the complex needs of the projects we're executing increase.

We've recognized we want a local based team, who is absolutely vested with decisional authority.

So on that, that local focus, the audit addressed that.

And I want to make sure that I understand if what you are telling us now about the new construction of leadership is, maybe either contradicts or responds to some of this.

So let me read a little bit from Brian's reporting here.

he wrote auditors detailed a dearth of local planning and controls, including when it comes to compliance with state regulations and a near-total absence of local decision making.

At one point, auditors inquired about New York regulatory matters and were told by Avangrid that those are discussed by the utility's leadership via the monthly regulatory, planning, operations and customer council meetings for New York.

In fact, auditors determined this committee does not exist.

End quote.

Is that wrong?

That's absolutely wrong.

I'll tell you right now, there's probably in a week.

Trish Nielsen, who's the CEO of Nyseg and has multiple meetings a week.

In fact, I was just one on one this morning where she had the entire team and we were talking about when we talk about capacity, we're talking about where in the areas of our system, companies or people housing wants to connect.

And we have, we don't have enough.

Right?

We have these meetings all the time to focus.

We talked about Henrietta.

We talk about Rochester in general.

We talk about every aurora system.

And everybody on that call is talking about specific projects that are right here.

In addition, on the regulatory side, we talk all the time about that.

So yeah, there's committee process.

But first off, no good business runs all of its decisions just by one committee or just a committee that meets once a week.

We need to be on the phone, and we need to be meeting all the time with the boots on the ground, so we understand what are the needs, what are the issues coming up, and are we solving them real time for the needs of our customers is what was written in the audit?

Was that true from 2018 to 2023?

Now we have a committee that I mean you have.

So again, how did they get that wrong?

I you know what?

I would love to know that because we answered 1600 questions and we asked for interviews.

We asked for interviews, especially on governance.

And some of these other things.

And we were not granted interviews.

When you have somebody who comes in and wants to just find something.

Remember these auditors bid on RFP issued by the state and in other states all the time, right?

They want they want to show that they're valuable, and they show that by the number of recommendations they can make.

And sometimes by the let's just say, I won't say incendiary, but some of the more, well, I won't characterize it, but some of the, findings that they quote make.

so their job is to show that they can find stuff because they want to get hired again.

But you don't think an audit could say, you know, this particular audit over five years finds a company that, while imperfect, is really working hard for ratepayers and making needed changes.

They couldn't say that.

You're saying that that they're not incentivized to tell a good story?

No, I don't believe they are incentivized to tell a good story.

Their job is to show that the regulator, that they can find issues and identify solutions.

And again, some of some of what they found.

Sure.

Right.

But if they're, you know, if they're lying or making stuff up, they're also not going to get hired.

Right.

Well, I would hope not.

But we've put up we're going to put our case forward and we're going to provide the documentation just like we have, and we'll talk about it when we file our implementation plan.

You mentioned that you have been on that side of things doing audits.

Yes.

Were you finding were you writing sort of flashy, incendiary language to try to get the attention, to get future jobs as all the time you were?

I think when you go in as an auditor, you want to show that you can find stuff.

Absolutely.

Were you fudging or stretching?

I think sometimes my view of the information may be driven by my desire for a particular outcome.

And I think that's in fact what we've we believe that the auditor has done in some cases.

I the reason I ask him is, I mean, the lay public is struggling to really make full sense of this, which is why I'm glad you're both here.

We're going to talk customer service in a moment.

so you can understand why the lay public would be a little confused about who runs an audit.

What does it actually mean?

Is it fair?

How extensive is it?

But when you tell me that you've been on the auditor side and you were willing to fudge a little, now you're on our side.

Why should we assume that you're not willing to touch?

Well, no.

I think that when you're on the other side, your goal is to find things that you can show value for the work that you've done.

So sometimes, right, you might find an issue that the utility doesn't agree with.

But your view is there's an issue.

I want to propose a recommendation.

I think my way or my thinking is better than what the utility's been doing.

And so I'm going to propose that.

And sometimes you use adjectives, right.

We you know, I don't think you can look at press releases from any, any level of government and not understand.

Sometimes you want to use bold language that captures the imagination and the attention of the of the reading public.

So I think it should still be well, and I think there's things that in there that aren't accurate.

And we and again we've provided a response and we provided 1600 responses to questions and asked for multiples of interviews that failed to occur.

All right.

So last couple points here before I turn to your colleague.

so when you say that the auditor's mission is to find things and to maybe use that flashy language to make sure that not only is it getting attention, but they'll get future work.

What is what is our Jeannie's role?

What is your if if that's their mission, what's our Jeannie's mission?

So our mission is to answer the questions, provide the individuals for interviews like happened five years ago with 160 plus.

and at the end of the day, we look at the audit, regardless of whether or not I agree with every conclusion that was reached or some of the language they used around findings.

We do look at the audit recommendations and we look at what we're doing, immersing.

Do these have merit and can we do better?

And I think one of the examples which we talked to the otter, I was in the meeting with the otter.

We talked to them before the report even came out was how we were shifting to a more jurisdictional model.

So bringing planning and project execution right here to Rochester, right to Nyseg, to our Jeannie's footprint.

And we've done that.

And I think that is going to have benefits.

So I'm not saying, listen, we know we know we're not perfect.

Right.

What we can do is try to get better every day for our customer.

And I think we do that by looking honestly at the audit recommendations and taking those that makes sense and putting them into place and making sure by the way, even making sure they don't cost the customer more.

Sometimes you get an audit, make a recommendation that it's not like, oh, I think you could do it better.

This way.

And we can show, in fact, no, if we either do it the way we're doing it or we do it slightly different, it's actually more cost effective for customers because some of these recommendations, if implemented, will have costs for customers.

And I scribbled some notes when you were talking earlier about the rate plan that you were in the middle of from 2018 to 2023.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I think you said that in part, that the rate plan then had little funding for customer service at the time.

Correct.

So the rate plan there was two rate.

We're in the middle of one now, but the one that preceded it and capture some of the audit.

Yeah.

Had a 2% cap on the rate increase that was allowed.

It was during we were coming into the pandemic, there were concerns about customer impact, completely agreed.

So there was some money in there.

We had two issues.

And Christine can talk about this with respect to customer service.

The first one is we did not get full funding of like tree trimming.

Right.

And so when you think about it, tree strikes or the usually the leading cause of power outages.

Right.

So then when we have more power outages we get more calls to the customer call center.

So you have that, you know, compounding with a pandemic back, right where we were just trying to figure out how do we get people out safely to read meters, how do we get people to respond to calls?

How do we deal with customers who were in crisis during the pandemic?

Could we have used more support for customer service?

Absolutely.

I guarantee you what we asked for in that rate case and what we ended up settling on is not the same thing.

And so we agree because there was 2% cap, people wanted us to hold our rates low, because of the pandemic.

And I think that also impacted our ability to provide service to our full capability.

Christine, what is happening now in regards to customer service, to to make sure your customers are well taken care of?

Well, we're doing a lot of things.

It's not just one area.

primarily the biggest issue we had during this Covid period was staffing.

And so we've done a lot of work to make sure that we have the right staffing levels.

and that means that we're able to answer customers calls, within the required levels.

and to and to that point, we're actually exceeding those levels.

But, that's the number one thing.

In addition to that, we also recognize we have customers that want to leverage technology.

So we put a lot of emphasis on our websites, our mobile apps, a lot of time there.

And then the biggest thing I think that has helped customers, is smart meter, installations.

I mean, that has been a big game changer.

it's part of some of the reasons we had some issues.

Right.

Unable to get access to people's homes to read meters.

the smart meters allows us to get the reads over the air.

So that has been a big some of the big things that we've been working on in customer service.

Do you think it has changed the climate among customers?

Has an improved the relationship?

Oh, absolutely.

I think, you know, the biggest thing that customers have issues with is the bill, right?

I mean, that is the driver of a lot of things, whether it be customers or not.

they're getting an estimated bill or, or something along those lines.

Smart meters eliminates that issue.

it gives them confidence that the bill they're receiving is accurate.

and so that has been a big deal for us.

In addition to that, it helps.

We have tools, attached to the smart meter called, one of them is Energy Manager.

It allows customers to actually go on to the website or their mobile app and actually see exactly how they're using, electricity, and allows them to make changes, within their home.

So some of that, I think, has gone a long way in improving, the relationship customers have with us.

I know I, I presume both of you have heard plenty of the public comments from some local elected leaders.

Again, not a majority in government right now who want to see a publicly owned utility or a government owned utility.

We're going to talk about that coming up here.

I think part of their argument may be what you're describing in terms of improved customer service.

They might say this has been decades.

We've had trouble with our genie billing and problems for decades.

And you want us to believe that now post audit, everything is changed when you know, the history would indicate we're going to continue to have problems.

I mean, is that an unfair framing of it?

Absolutely it is.

I think the numbers speak for themselves.

I, I, we all acknowledged that we had a difficult, 20, 22, it was probably our most difficult period.

And part of it was because, we were coming out of Covid, we have people that were not paying bills.

We were not able to get access to read meters, over 40% of our meters in Rochester, was inside, and we were not entering homes.

And so that created some problems for us.

but what I will say is that if you look at our numbers for every single category that is measured, whether it be percentage of calls answered or estimate, the percentage of estimated bills, complaints in every single one of those categories.

We have gotten better year over year.

And I would say this, that before the pandemic, if you look at our genies performance 2018, 2019 leading into 2020, they were performing consistent with performance metrics for customer service.

And in fact, some of those years, our Genie was ranked at the top for J.D.

Power survey for customer satisfaction.

So I get that.

What just happen is always front of mind versus what historically has been done.

And I and I would say history actually is on the side of Genie, and it's dedication to the community.

I also wanted to ask you about part of the statement that you sent to us last week, when we spoke to City Council Member Mary Lucien and a member of Metro Justice about their desire to replace our Genie with a publicly owned utility.

in part in that statement, you said this, quote, Metro Justice's repeated claims against our genie and calls for government controlled power, which is not in the best interest of our customers or our employees.

The women and men who do the work on behalf of our customers day in and day out, in blue sky and storms, and which would also put Rochester taxpayers on the hook for over $10 billion, have failed to gain support in the mainstream.

The community doesn't need a study or the socialism it calls for.

It deserves facts.

End quote.

but across the country, the move toward public power has happened in places that, you know, politically or on the right that despise socialism.

from yes magazine, from Nebraska, quote, in this red state, publicly owned utilities provide electricity to all 1.8 million people, end quote.

And this is from a paper written for the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.

Quote, the federal utilities and non investor owned distributors are now more important on average in red states than in blue ones.

Interest has trumped ideology.

Republican policymakers, strongly opposed to socialism in principle, seem happy with the important role of government enterprises in the US electric utility industry and, quote.

Why do you think government owned power is popular in some politically red places?

Well, let's talk about Nebraska and and that area of the country, because I worked for the New York Power Authority for four and a half years.

Right.

I I've been at conferences with a lot of these big public power providers.

Right.

those companies started out part of rural electrification, where private businesses at the time of the country developing in that area didn't go or couldn't go, couldn't get the capital for it.

So it really started as public power.

If you if you look at it right, I don't think Nebraska ever had private IOUs.

It was always public.

It has a lot of coal, right?

If you look at the mix that they have and if you look at public power, especially in that part of the country, you will actually see that their migration away from Fossil Electric generation is the slowest in the nation.

So I'm just I'm going to position right, a group who wants public power but also wants, you know, the greening of the grid and electrification of buildings and transit.

The middle of the country is not the place to look for that inspiration.

And in fact, again, it's this is a historical leftover that that's the way they electrified their state was through a public power group.

Now let's talk about places like Maine, right, which had a referendum.

And even in the most progressive city of Portland, it was an even tie on the vote of the referendum of whether or not to do to do government controlled power in Maine.

And that referendum lost 70% to 31.

What I really want to talk about, though, is we've got a lot of challenges here, right?

We've got a government that has basically eliminated all the staffing for lie heap, which is the federal program to put dollars in customers pockets who most need it to pay for their energy bills.

We should be working on that, restoring not only the people were in so important to get these dollars out, but also making sure that the dollars are there for the program.

We have a lot of customers who depend on that federal program.

Let's work together on that.

Let's work together on building codes for the city of Rochester that looks at landlords and works with them to do weatherization programs, to participate in community solar.

Let's bring tools to the people, not studies that'll take us ten years and spend $10 billion to buy the asset.

So on the cost of the asset.

One of the things that the panelists were saying last week is that there's this idea of a big price tag, whether it's $10 billion less than that, whatever.

But they say that the cost of taking of the operation from our margin would be paid out over 30 years, like a mortgage, and would be much easier to absorb in that way.

So it's not accurate to just put that big number up front and say, this is going to sink taxpayers because of the way it would be paid out over time.

You still have to pay for even if you take a $10 billion bond issuance, which would triple double balloon the debt of the city of Rochester.

And assuming you'd figure out how to dissect the city of Rochester from the multiple counties that all serve, customers would still pay for it.

Not only would they pay that mortgage payment, but now they've got to renovate the roof.

They got to put on a new furnace.

When we talk about capacity and we talk about building out the infrastructure so businesses can come to Rochester so we can build more housing, which is desperately needed.

That's additive to paying the mortgage payment.

So yeah, I think that if we want to really look at the issues and help our customers, let's start with again, programs that we desperately need to continue at the federal level.

Let's look at solutions that are on the ground for customers today, including a whole housing stock.

How many of the Rochester residents rent apartments that they can't control weatherization because it's in the hands of the landlord?

Let's work together on that.

Let's look at heat pumps.

Let's look let's look at community solar so we can help drive down their customer cost.

In a moment, we'll get some listener feedback on the phones and via email.

Let me also mention that, host Jasmine Singer is having a conversation on the future of electric vehicles tomorrow on Environmental Connections, and that production team has put together this question in advance of the conversation.

So this comes from them.

they say we've reported on capacity issues are genius facing in places like Henrietta, Brighton, Penfield.

Back in January, the county notified the state that the available power at the RGV substation for most of Henrietta has reached zero megawatt.

it was zero MWh per megawatt.

Is that megawatt hours okay?

Zero.

This puts over 1000 new housing units at risk, as well as hundreds of jobs.

At least one project has already moved elsewhere due to lack of available power.

and then Jasmine's team goes on to say we've also reported on the efforts to address those concerns, particularly the state responding with $4.7 million in grant funding to help with the shortage in Henrietta.

But with all the demands from EVs and data centers to the push for electrification and general development, can you talk about the challenges RGV and other utilities are facing in trying to meet and forecast future demands beyond cost and any supply chain issues and the challenges under the current structure in doing so.

Yeah, no, that's a that's a great question.

And as you know, I call it station 255.

Right, which is Henrietta.

And we have taken a look at that.

we work with the state, as you mentioned.

There's a state grant in there.

And when we build out capacity, we call it, right.

When we make more room in that substation for people to use power from it, we don't look just for the customer who's in front of us.

Right.

We try to future proof that.

And so we're working on that.

And in fact, we're working on a capital investment plan that addresses that.

But I think the challenge not only for Renae and Nyseg, but for all utilities, frankly, in the country as well as in the state, is that we're stewards of our customer money.

And there is only so much of it that we can ask them for, and we understand that.

And so when we look at these massive builds at buildout, whether it's Google or Meta or, you know, Amazon Web Services or whatever it is, we have to figure out two things.

One is we have to figure out how do we make sure the people who are causing the need are paying for it?

Right.

The last thing we want, right, is for our customers to pay to build out a substation that an Amazon or a meta or somebody else comes in and uses.

Right.

They should if they're going to if they're causing some of that need, they should pay for it.

So we want to get the allocation of that cost right.

The second thing is we want to build out in a way that makes sense for all customers, because again, it's a finite amount of money we get right when we go into the Public Service Commission, we say, here are the places that we have zero capacity left, zero megawatts.

Here's what we think economically is going on from housing to industry.

We want to invest here, but we also have to invest in infrastructure that's just aging some.

Upstate New York has some of the oldest infrastructure and it makes sense, right.

We went through a boon of building right in the 50s, in the 60s.

And then you went this period where industry moved out.

Right.

And so we had a lot of capacity because industry left.

Well, it's a good thing, right?

The capacity is eroding because we've actually had a reintroduction of manufacturing and housing and people who want to live in Rochester.

We have to figure out whether it's electrifying your apartment or EV charging station or, data center or AI.

We just have to figure out with everybody, it has to be a whole conversation with local and state and community and us.

Where do we put the money and the investment?

Are we close to having the right mix right now?

I think we're working on it.

I think it's a conversation that really has come, come up.

And it's interesting.

I just when we look at the forecast of demand, when you look two years ago, the Climate Action Council did a report.

If you look at that, everything was going to be driven by EVs and building electrification.

Now, if you look at ePrix, right, which is a national research institute, that's not the demand used just for that isn't even on the map.

It's all data centers and AI and reshoring of manufacturing.

So we we've got a kind of reevaluate what's the needs now and how can we plan out in the future and making sure people are paying that are causing some of the need.

Right.

I don't want to see cost shift to customers who are residential customers who will benefit.

Right?

For new business and industry coming in, but who aren't necessarily causing that need.

And so we really have to be thoughtful about that.

We're talking about the RGA and Nyseg response to that recent independent audit that got a lot of attention and, we're talking to Kim Herman, senior vice president of public and regulatory affairs for Avon Grid.

Christine Alexander, vice president of customer service for our Genie and Nyseg.

And we got to take our only break of the hour.

We'll come back to some of your feedback on the other side.

Coming up in our second hour, we're joined by RGA and some of its leadership talking about a.

From WXXI news I'm Jasmine Singer.

Tune in Friday to Environmental Connections.

We're looking at New York's ambitious zero emissions mandate and why more people aren't driving electric vehicles.

Then in the second hour, the marvelous world of mushrooms and mycelium.

Curious?

Tune in this Friday for environmental connections.

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This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson, Anthony and Victor first on the phone.

Hi Anthony.

Go ahead.

Anthony, are you there?

Let's figure out where Anthony is.

We're going to get him back in a second.

And, let me go to Lee in Rochester next, see if we can get Lee.

Are you there?

Lee?

Go ahead.

Yeah.

I'm here.

so my question is about the government takeover.

you know, specifically concern about, you know, what's happened twice now in Puerto Rico?

you know, island wide blackouts makes me really nervous about having a government run grid in Rochester.

the government does run the grid in Puerto Rico, and it sounds like they were never really invested in keeping it up to date.

So when there's a big storm, you know, instead of having isolated outages that could come back online quickly, the whole island ends up in a blackout that goes on for a very long time.

And, you know, I just don't think that the government will make the hard choices, to do necessary upgrades.

You know, I, I know that's less of an actual question, but I think it's relevant to this discussion.

Okay.

Lee, I appreciate that.

Anything you want to add here?

Panelists.

Yeah, I would just say that it's always hard with government owns, the operations.

They have a lot of different priorities that sometimes they have to prioritize and what ends up happening is sometimes it's easier to say no to investment in one area because there's other needs, that are pushing on their budget and that and we've seen that happen.

a couple of emails here.

And by the way, listeners, if you want to thank you, Lee, for the phone call, it's 844295 talk.

If you want to join the conversation about our geni and Nyseg 8442958255263 WXXI.

If you call from Rochester 26399994, you can email the program connections at skywalk.

there's a Charles and a Charlie.

Charles says the following Mary Lucien's condescending comment about people who don't live in the city oppose a public utility was stupid, given that our genie serves more than just this city.

And last night at the debate, she said money for nothing more times than Mark Knopfler does.

That said, a few years back, our genie decided to charge a bank account that didn't exist to pay my bill, and then spent months claiming the issue was my fault and that I owed them a penalty for a return to payment.

You don't need to convince me that the government shouldn't be in charge of more stuff.

They shouldn't, especially not in New York State.

But you do need to convince me that a Spain based company isn't going to be equally incompetent.

That is from Charles response.

There.

Well, I'm not sure all that's involved in that issue, but what I will say is, we're definitely not perfect.

but and when issues arise, when a customer calls us or emails us with an issue, we definitely will look into those issues.

I'm not sure exactly what happened with the payment, but what I do know is, we we have, a back office team dedicated to researching issues that arise, and being able to respond to customers timely.

So, again, I don't know what the specific circumstances are for that particular issue.

but we have folks that are that are here to help.

And let's put it into perspective.

We issue 1.4 million bills.

Our billing issues have been less than, I think, half a percent.

Yeah, we're billing 99.97% of our customers accurately.

So that's a pretty good number.

So we're we're sorry for like we understand sometimes things happen but but again half a percent on a 1.4 million bill.

I would love that precision in how I keep track of my accounts or how I keep track of my kids grades, but my expertise is not in auditing the audit.

Imply to my reading of it that the actual number of missed billings or or changes, etc.

is a little bit higher based on how you categorize some either disputes or changes.

No.

Well, and I think we go back to the issue of the timing of the audit.

Right?

We we've since been rolling out smart meters.

we're over I think we're closer to 1.3 million of those installed right now across, territory between Mexico and our genie.

so the time, the timing for some of this, I think, is a question.

Did we have, some billing issues?

Absolutely.

During Covid, as I mentioned before, 44% of our meters are inside in Rochester.

We were not able to get into homes.

And so we did have to estimate a lot of those bills.

But now I think that has changed, tremendously.

And a big part of that change is the installation of the smart meters.

And I just want to address this issue that somehow there is some, you know, man behind the curtain, you know, away on a continent.

That's not true.

Christine, as we talked about, was right here in Rochester.

I grew up and was raised in Hilton, New York.

I'm a West Sider, right?

We have 800 men and women who live and work in this area and in this community.

The decisions are here.

Trish Nielsen is here.

She's making those decisions.

and so so again, I don't want to get into xenophobia and everything else, but we've got real people here and we've had real challenges.

And no, not a single customer who has a billing issue is is again, I don't want to, you know, diminish that to a statistics.

We want everybody we want 100% and we will continue to work to 100% because our customers deserve that.

Email from Dan in Rochester says, I live in the city.

I've never had any issues with our genie.

A few months ago, a tree came down taking down my power lines.

I called our genie and they answered quickly and had a repair crew out very quickly last week, and our genie contractor was going through the neighborhood doing a yearly check of gas lines.

The contractor detected a gas leak.

The contractor contacted our genie who were here, very quickly, informed me of what was going on and did, their own detection.

They determined that the contractors equipment was actually an error.

I have also never had any issues with billing or estimate reading.

Our genie always reads my meter every other month and estimates the other times.

I do not feel that money needs to be spent on a study for a publicly owned utility.

That's from Dan in Rochester, Charlie in Pittsford.

So we heard Charles early.

This is Charlie A in Pittsford.

He says, I've paid my bill on time for over 34 years for the same house.

The last 5 to 6 years have been a nightmare.

Here is a partial list.

I was receiving bills with my ex-wife's name yet the bill was always in my name.

For 34 years, I've received bills for a duck, for double of any bill ever received.

The last four years I have not received any bill in the mail yet.

I never signed up for online billing and adding insult.

I do receive a threatening letter every month stating they're going to turn my power off in two weeks if I don't pay the bill, and this actually happened last July during a heat wave.

But for calls later, we had the power turned back on.

I am sick of this situation.

I've called them literally dozens of times with no response.

Finally, last month I lost my cool and I began screaming at the person on the phone.

I am done with this.

They don't seem to care about the customer.

That's Charlie A yeah, I would love to get Charlie's information if you have it.

So we could contact him directly and try to get this resolved.

But again, you know, we'd have to look at the account and see what happened here.

clearly he's had some, issues, and we take all of those issues seriously.

Right.

We want our customer's experience to be a positive one.

we know there are times when, you know, things may not go according to how our customer expects.

And our job is to make sure that that happens.

So if I could get his information, I'd be more than happy to circle back.

Charlie, if you want me to share your email address, I will share it directly with, our guests here.

And if they want to circle back, they can.

They can do that.

let me get back to your phone calls.

I think this boy lay looney, I think in Rochester.

Is that the right name?

It's Leilani.

Leilani.

Sorry.

Right.

Oh, yeah.

User error here.

Go ahead.

I'm wondering, so the people that are pushing for the government takeover say they want to form some type of, nonprofit entity, but what?

It really wouldn't really be the government owning the grid, right?

It would really be the government.

And my concern is that it would be their aim would be subject to whatever the priorities were this year for a politician, you know, whatever was important to the politicians on any given day, we all know that change is wildly okay.

thank you.

Leilani.

Yeah, I would just say that I think we've seen that right in your example with Nebraska.

you know, you had a very conservative state who wanted to stay with coal, when in fact they slowed down any transition to renewable generation.

And and I think that's right.

And it's hard to point.

I mean, these assets last 60, 70 years.

So you you really need consistency of not only operation but investment.

And so I agree with the caller.

I think we've got Anthony back now from Victor.

Let's try it again.

Hey, Anthony.

Go ahead.

Hey, Evan, how are you?

Thank you for taking my call.

Sure.

So I've had quite a few experiences with our genie, and I would like as just a test.

Why doesn't, you call our geni and see how long it takes for a customer service representative to actually answer your call without the first thing being said?

That we're experiencing a large volume of calls every single time I've called, I've had that experience.

So if you have time on your show, I'd really like to hear that.

Also, we had several experiences where the meters were changed, and not only did my, cost go up on a monthly basis, it tripled.

And when I called back to explain to them that two people living in a house can't go from a $400 bill to a $2,000 bill, it took three months.

And slowly, gradually losing your patience with the customer service representative that's telling you that you use this electricity.

The meters can't possibly be wrong.

Three months.

I'd like for them to take the feedback on that or see what they say about this and actually try.

Please try calling customer service and see what they have to say.

I don't know that we can do that.

Anthony Yeah, I do.

I appreciate the point.

I'll let the guests respond.

Go ahead.

So a couple of things on, the speed of answer.

So as with many call centers, there are times, right, when volume tends to be higher than other times.

And oftentimes when you call, regardless of the call center, you'll hear call volumes are high.

Or here's the best times to call you.

Sure, he's saying that's all the time.

Well, again, I don't know what times he's calling though.

Okay, so but there are times that are Mondays or Fridays when we tend to see higher call volumes.

we tend to see higher call volumes in the morning sometimes, and then late afternoon.

So, some of that I'm not sure what times he's calling us, but some of that is just, the nature of call centers.

we are fully staffed, to handle calls.

And as I mentioned before, we have a commission mandate where we have to answer 70% of our calls within 30s.

And we have exceeded that, year over year, and we're exceeding that this year.

So what I will say to Anthony is there are other, we have a website available, where you could send an email or get answers to questions.

we have an AI tool called Ava that could also help answering questions.

and in addition to that, we have our mobile app that he could also leverage.

but I would also say just check the timing of when you call.

there there are no perfect.

we're not you know, our goal is to get the calls answered in 30s.

But again, there are some times when we have higher call volumes and that's expected of a call center.

I know the question.

I know care must jump.

And let me just clarify for one point.

I'm going to ask his question in a slightly different way.

Is it true that whenever you call at any time of day, you will always hear we are experiencing high call volumes?

If we are, you will.

But you're saying there's times where you will not hear that.

There are times when you will not hear that, but there are times when you will.

Okay, now, now, summertime tends to be a busy time, right?

Because we we have we have a lot of activity in the summer.

but I will say this, that, we are we as I mentioned, we are exceeding our call answer times.

on the issue of the meters, I just wanted to to acknowledge, a couple of things there.

we have seen higher supplier costs this winter.

we have also, cannot attribute that to the meter per se, as he mentioned, as you mentioned, another caller mentioned, we were typically reading bills every second month.

Right.

So every two months we are reading bills.

So we have a period here when we had to catch up.

Right.

So we would read an actual this month we get an estimated the next month.

And then we'll catch up on the third.

And so for us I think when you get a smart meter, you're actually there's no catch up.

You're getting exactly what's on the meter every month, how you use your electricity, you know, is recorded on the meter.

That's all we're billing it to.

As I mentioned earlier, we also have an energy manager tool.

Anthony could go on to our website if he has a smart meter, and he could see exactly what day, what he used that day, what he used that hour.

And it could give him a lot of good information so that is really the advantage of having that smart meter.

I'm not sure what all the details are around his particular, usage, but I'll be more than happy to look at that too.

And we go out and we test that if somebody calls and says, hey, this tripled.

I'm doing everything the same.

We're not in winter.

By the way, when are we had the normal winter for once.

Right.

And it was 16% colder than in years past.

And so people thought if I set it at 68 degrees, my furnace, I should have no difference.

But they don't understand.

We literally had to do a lot of education that your furnace had to work harder to keep it at 68, because it's 16% colder out this year.

But getting back to his question, if you think your meter isn't working right, if you really think that it's read it wrong, we will.

And we have gone out and tested the meter.

We will deploy a crew to say, let's go test this meter to make 100% sure.

So that's that's what we do.

Just like you talked about, we show up when we're called to test the meter.

But I just want to make one really important point.

Some are prices.

Let's just for customers.

Right.

The commission had a report this past their past session.

Summer prices are going to go up for supply.

So I want to just really emphasize that we're looking, you know, at a 6.5% increase in the electricity you use, how much it costs.

That's not us.

We deliver it.

So I want to just prepare customers for this summer.

Get on usage alerts.

Right.

Maybe crank that thermostat up a little bit.

It's not going to be us.

Who's who?

You.

And again we don't make any money on the power you use.

They're going to go it's going to be more expensive this summer.

And if we have a hot summer, you put those two things together with usage and price and customers will see bill impacts.

So we want to get ahead of that now.

Help them identify tools, program that that can help them manage their energy wallet.

Yeah.

And just one point of clarity here on the meter accuracy.

we do sample test, bike mandated by the commission, that we test these meters before installation.

Right.

So, to call us and ask for a meter test is not necessary, per se.

I mean, we're definitely not encouraging that.

However, you know, folks have to be confident in the fact that these meters are tested by parties outside of us, and they have been accurate.

Right.

let me read from Rebecca on YouTube.

What have they actually done that has any sort of positive environmental impact?

They were talking about installing heat pumps, etc.. What have they done in terms of an environment?

They're saying they need to provide more power.

What are they doing to make sure it is cleaner power?

So, Ingrid is the third largest supplier of clean generation in the country.

We actually operate, in fact, a hydro dam right here in the city of Rochester, which we'd happy to take you even on a tour of, we look at sourcing power, you know, the upstate grid, by the way, is the cleanest out of all New York State, because if you look at it, between nuclear and the hydro facilities that are on the Saint Lawrence and the Niagara River, if you look at the upstate grid, it's actually 85% clean.

So when we buy power in the market, it's generally clean because of where we're located.

As a corporation, we try to look at development of projects.

We're building the first offshore wind project that's 62 turbines, off the eastern seaboard.

Right.

We're looking at solar and wind farms coupled with battery storage.

So we walk the talk on heat pumps.

Our program under our Jeanie is actually oversubscribed.

So we're talking to regulators, in the upcoming month to see how we can build that program out, especially for low income and moderate income customers.

All right, back to the phones.

I've been waiting.

Dave is next.

David.

Hi, David.

Go ahead.

Hi, there.

I, I think I recognize that voice.

Go ahead.

David.

Yeah, it's David Cay Johnston.

simple question number.

Or you won't tell us what percentage of all GE revenues are upstream to the parent company in Spain?

David, I miss you in person here.

So maybe we'll we'll have to come back and do this again.

I answer from the last time.

So so to the question, well, first off, why don't we talk about how much actually that comes in from the parent company, which is about $240 million.

Ma'am, you're the car, all right?

I do have a percentage of revenues.

Get upstream to the parent.

In Spain, it's negative.

It's a it's a negative.

We the way that the situation works is when we have revenues, right?

That after we pay all our costs and we pay our bills, we send what we call a dividend to avangrid.

That dividend, I think in the past year has been about 100, 150 million.

Now, what's not covered in this is that Avangrid actually puts 200 to 250 million plus back into RGA, because right now the rates actually don't cover the actual costs of operating this company.

So you're losing money for Avangrid.

That's the claim.

Yeah.

Why would you why would the company hang on to this?

Oh, wait a minute.

The audit shows that you have 13 different internal suppliers and it challenges whether you are overcharging through those suppliers.

It also points out that you don't have an objective executive bonus system, but a subjective one.

nobody holds on to a business for a long period of time if they're losing money.

Well, I would debate that because in fact, we've been a community fixture for 175 years in Rochester.

And unlike some companies, we don't pick up.

We do not pick up stakes and leave when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

And we're going to continue providing service to Rochester for decades to come.

All right.

Given anything that has not been here for 175 years.

Okay, let's be clear.

We have a Spanish owner with no vested interest in the welfare of our community.

We used to have a federal law that required local control of utilities to ensure quality service.

Well, let's put aside your xenophobic comments because I think we have enough of that at the federal level.

Frankly, I don't.

And let's talk about why is it xenophobic just because I know know what?

Let's talk about it.

Really what we're talking about.

Somebody is not immediately right here.

And if they benefit from the operation of the right here in your backyard, somehow that's nefarious or improper.

Even drill has been putting money into avangrid and avangrid putting money into these utilities since it took over in 2008.

And for many, many years it's been a negative cash flow situation.

We believe that in the long run we will receive, right the payment from the operations.

That is consistent and set by the regulator.

So I'm not going to get into, again, an audit that I think has fundamental issues about whether or not suppliers are doing this or that, but we show everything when we set rates.

And that was a statement made, I think, last week.

Somehow we can charge whatever we want, we can pay whomever we want.

We can't do anything.

The commission looks at everything from toilet paper to transformers, every person we hire, every payment we make, every project we build, including the dividend.

By the way, that goes to Avangrid.

And let's talk about the fact that if it weren't for an even greater EBITDA dollar, we would not have transformers during the crux of the inflation and supply chain crisis, we pulled them from Brazil so we can continue serving customers in Rochester.

I don't think it's inherently xenophobic, though, to say if if a corporation elsewhere, whether it's a new Jersey landlord who buys a bunch of houses in Rochester and doesn't have a stake in the community, if if that is a good situation or one in which they are invested.

Now, your claim is that there is more local control than the audit said, and that there is an investment in the community.

But I don't think it's inherently xenophobic.

Question.

That is it.

I think it's xenophobic.

When you focus on what country somebody comes from and you're talking about, are they acting nefarious?

If you want to talk about corporations, he could have kept it avangrid, but he didn't.

He went all the way up, pretending somehow that some foreign bad actor is trying to take a ride.

And that's not true.

And in fact, they've been nothing but supportive since 2008, with the hundreds of millions of dollars they put into the operation of this company, I would like to say that Kim and Christine are welcome back any time, and I want to thank you for making the time to do that.

Kim Herman is senior vice president of public and regulatory affairs for Alvin.

Good.

Thank you for being here, Kim.

Thank you.

Christine Alexander, vice president of customer service for Arjuna.

And Isaac, thank you very much.

And all the listeners whose emails, calls, etc.

did not get through.

And we'll keep talking about this.

There's still a lot to talk about on these issues from all of us at connections.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you for watching.

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