First State Times

Today, the Delaware Public Service Commission (PSC) released The Final Report assessing the conduct and results of Delmarva Power’s electric Standard Offer Service (SOS) reverse auction process for the 2021-2022 procurement year; the PSC was assisted by its technical consultant, Siemens PTI. Delmarva Power successfully secured all of the outstanding needs for full-requirement service for their electric customers who have not chosen an alternative electric supplier.

The procurement process used a reverse auction process that relies upon bidders’ awareness of the auctions of other bidders in an attempt to drive prices down for both Delmarva Power and customers. Of the twelve companies interested in this year’s Request For Proposals (RFP), eight were eligible to bid: all eight were actual bidders and all eight won a portion of Delmarva Power’s SOS needs. The winning supplies were AEP, Axpo, DTE, Exelon, Hartree, NextEra, TransAlta, and Vitol.

Delmarva held two separate auctions, one in November 2021 and one in January 2022 and acquired approximately 565.8 MWs. The average winning bid for the Residential Small Commercial and Industrial (RSCI) 2-year contract was approximately 20.9% higher than last year. For the Medium (MGS), Large (LGS), and Primary (GS-P) general service customers, the average winning bids ranged from an increase of 28.5% to 46.4% compared to last year’s bids.

Based on the bid prices alone, the approximate change in the average monthly bill by customer class is as follows:

• 0.67% increase for RSCI class;
• 1.82% to 2.08% increase for the SGS class;
• 12.41% to 15.41% increase for the MGS class;
• 17.32% to 18.55% increase for the LGS class; and
• 2.77% to 28.52% increase in the GS-P class.

These are only power costs and do not include various other costs that are subject to change on the bills. The full version of the Technical Consultant’s Final Report can be found on the PSC’s website by clicking here.