A rebate should be appearing on the bill of Fort Frances Power Corp.
customers by mid- to late June, FFPC CEO and president Mark McCaig said yesterday afternoon.
“We’ve received word from the government [on Wednesday] regarding the promised rebate to our customers,” he noted.
“The way it’s going to be done is the FFPC will receive a credit on its invoice from the Independent Electricity Market Operator [IMO],” he explained. “When we receive that, we’ll be passing that on to our customers.
“We’ll take a look at what everybody paid from May 1 of last year to March 31 of this year. Then, we’ll look at what they would have paid if they’d had the 4.3 kW/h cap.
“The difference is what they’ll be credited with.”^McCaig said unlike elsewhere in the province, where hydro customers received a $75 rebate cheque late last year and then a second rebate, the FFPC has been instructed to deliver the credit in one step.
Even if this wasn’t the case, Mc- Caig added the FFPC isn’t in a position to be sending out cheques to all its customers because a good number of accounts are in arrears after the winter.
The FFPC has not cut off anybody’s power despite the provincially- ordered moratorium that elapsed at the beginning of April.
McCaig noted the credit could be significant for some customers, particularly small businesses that qualify for the 4.3 kW/h cap. In fact, some may get one large enough to carry them over their next few months worth of hydro bills.
The province initially denied FFPC customers the benefit of the province-wide 4.3 cent/kWh hydro cap on the grounds local residents had—thanks to the power agreement with the mill—been paying less than most other hydro customers across Ontario after the electricity market opened to competition last May.
Under intense local lobbying, the province eventually backed down and announced in mid-March that FFPC customers would get a break after all.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
