Public Utilities - Electric Cooperatives - Rate Proceedings

Public review for cooperative utility rates

Beginning October 1, 2025, Maryland extends special rate-review procedures to electric cooperatives and qualifying small utilities. Small utilities include gas, electric, telephone, water, and sewage companies. Their annual revenue must be below 3% of all Maryland public service companies’ combined revenue, using the latest available calendar year. The process starts when the Public Service Commission suspends a proposed rate based on an existing approved financial target. That target is the utility’s allowed return or the cooperative’s debt-payment coverage ratio. The commission must promptly review whether more revenue is needed to meet that target. It must notify parties from the prior base-rate case and require newspaper notices and a public hearing. The initial review keeps the prior case’s rate structure and accounting methods and cannot raise the financial target. The commission can use a more recent past period to measure costs and revenue. Within 90 days after filing, it must issue a final revenue order, spreading any change proportionally among customers without changing the rate structure. That order must say whether further proceedings will follow and can provide for refunds from that later review. After a hearing, the commission can change the rate structure or accounting methods, or lower the financial target. Those actions must occur within 120 days after the initial final order. This process excludes temporary-rate requests and proposals filed less than one year after a previous proposal under these rules. Unless the commission allows otherwise, it also excludes proposals filed more than three years after approval of the existing financial target. Utilities cannot file another rate proposal while this process is pending or until the resulting rate has operated for 90 days. A new-service filing that leaves the financial target unchanged remains allowed.