During the West Virginia Public Service Commission's evidentiary hearing on the Potomac Edison/Mon Power Billing, Meter Reading and Customer Service Practices General Investigation, company witness Kaye Julian told the Commissioners that the EPRI report would be completed on January 6.
Q. Okay. All right. And you mentioned EPRI and the EPRI study, and I know that you --- while we’re on the subject, on page 11 of your testimony, your Direct testimony, you’d made a change at line eight. You state that the EPRI study is now expected to be completed by January 6th, 2014; correct?
A. Correct.
Q. Do you know why it’s been pushed back from December 31st?
A. I received an e-mail this morning from them requesting a little bit more time, because they’ve been meeting with the teams that actually were on site, and after they’ve had a couple of their meetings, they just feel like they’re going to need a little more time.
Q. Now, do you participate in these meetings? A. I have been.
Q. I’m sorry, you have been?
A. Yes.
Q. Okay.
A. Now, I have not been making every single one of them, but ---.
Q. I mean, they’re weekly meetings?
A. That’s right. Recently they had me come daily.
Q. Okay. When did this --- when did the EPRI review begin? I mean, it’s been several months now in the making; correct?
A. Yeah, I believe we signed the statement of work with them in July.
Q. And what are you --- what specifically are you --- are the Companies having EPRI look at? I mean, what is the purpose?
A. What we’re doing is we’re trying to simulate the estimation routine with having lots of good data, and then going through and creating all those scenarios of every other estimate --- every other month estimate, two months in a row estimate, three months in a row estimate, and letting the routine take that data and determining --- I guess we’re trying to figure out where are those checkpoints that we might need. Are we not applying something appropriately that we should be? So we’re more or less --- we’re calling it forensics. That’s basically what they’re doing for us, trying to help us determine, you know, with the data available where we see some issues or breakdown and how can we improve our routine.
Q. And is EPRI going to tell you how it should be improved, assuming it finds breakdowns?
A. Yes.
Q. Okay. Now, is the Company’s plan to implement whatever correction EPRI recommends?
A. I think it’s a little early for me to say that, because I don’t know all of the expense associated with what they would ask us to implement or recommend we implement.
Q. Okay. So there’s a chance that EPRI may say you need to do these 20 things, for example, and the Company says we don’t have the money or the resources to do any of those; we’re just going to disregard your recommendation? That’s a possibility; correct? A. Anything’s possible.
January 6 has come and gone, with the EPRI report still missing from the public information on the case docket.
I guess we should prepare ourselves for "possible."
I guess we should prepare ourselves for "possible."
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