CPS Energy whittles down customers’ total past due to $145M

Over its first financial quarter of the year, CPS Energy has successfully lowered the total amount it’s owed by past-due customers from the $175.5 million it was owed as of December to $145.8 million, as of the end of April.

The utility has also lowered the total amount it is likely to write off from $42.7 million to $35 million over that same time frame, CPS Energy officials told the utility’s board of trustees Monday afternoon.

CPS Energy’s trustees were given a financial performance update over the utility’s unique first quarter Monday, which runs from February 1 through April 30. CPS Energy’s officials attributed the utility’s significant progress to increased outreach efforts and to new types of communications alerts that notify customers when they’re past due or close to being past due.

Outside of the emergency energy alerts customers can sign up to receive, CPS Energy also has more customers signing up for bill reminders, said DeAnna Hardwick, chief customer strategy officer.

These alerts remind customers to pay their bills, or if they are late, it tells them that they’re late, Hardwick explained. For customers on payment plans, it reminds them their bill payment date is coming up, and for days that CPS Energy doesn’t disconnect customers due to hot weather, it tells customers they will not be disconnected that day but if the utility were doing disconnections they may be due for one or close to due for one, Hardwick explained.

“CPS Energy has continued to find ways to connect customers to solutions and installment plans that best fit their needs,” said CPS Energy’s Public Relations Manager Dana Sotoodeh. “On any given day, Monday through Saturday, our customer outreach teams are present at 10 different locations in the community and totaled 3,600 engagements last fiscal year.”

Currently, the utility still has 185,415 customer accounts past due, Sotoodeh said. Roughly 74,000 of those accounts are set up on a payment plan of some kind in an effort to recoup about $82 million of the total owed, said the utility’s Chief Financial Officer Cory Kuchinsky.

About 73,000 customers are still at risk of disconnection, totaling about $28 million, Kuchinsky said. The utility is “placing a strategic focus” on these customers since they “hold the most significant potential for resolution through payment plans or account closure,” Kuchinsky said.

Previously, CPS Energy officials said it has seen the number of customers who have fallen behind on paying their bills swell significantly over the last four years, first as a result of the pandemic and then by persistent inflation. Before the pandemic, CPS Energy had about 15,000 accounts that were consistently past due, totaling about $5 million, Hardwick said in December.