Alberta Utilities Consumer Advocate keeps watch on power suppliers

Primed with industry knowledge, advocate fields upwards of 4,500 calls per month

December 01, 2009

Just because consumers live in Alberta does not mean they understand or trust gas and power suppliers. A charge of misleading practices that the provincial government filed in court against a Calgary energy merchant this fall, acting on a customer complaint, was just a sample of friction between the public and the industry.

The telephone lines of the Alberta Utilities Consumer Advocate hum with 4,500 calls a month, reports Karin Gashus. The busy grievance pace was set before she had time, following her summer appointment as the agency’s chief, to carry out a commitment to reverse results of opinion polling that shows the energy ombudsman is one of the least known provincial government services.

Much of the agency’s $8-million annual budget pays for participation in regulatory cases that rarely attract attention outside an inner circle of experts. Gashus has set her sights on raising the profile of the six-year-old utilities watchdog to the stature of a familiar brand that pops into energy consumers’ minds whenever questions crop up about gas and power service.

Gashus emphasizes the agency’s stature as an independent energy observer and advocate. “We have allegiance to nobody,” she says.

The watchdog’s budget is covered by a share in overall power revenues rather than a government grant. An advisory council includes veterans of farming, ranching, local governments, small and family businesses and charitable public services.

Her plans include opening a Calgary office for the agency, which to date has been concentrated in Edmonton. Two big, province-wide issues are developing that will heighten need for the advocacy office, she observes.

The first one surfaced in mid-2009, when the Conservative government authorized AltaLink LP and Atco Electric to start planning construction of the first new power transmission lines between Edmonton and Calgary in about two decades. The action raised alarms among landowner, environmental and consumer groups that brought previous versions of the proposed grid additions to a standstill before the former Alberta Energy and Utilities Board.

Not the least of the worries is that the regulatory arena has changed. The AEUB has been split back into the two agencies that managed energy issues before they were merged as part of early-1990s budget cuts. The Alberta Utilities Commission again regulates consumer service franchises. The Energy Resources Conservation Board is back in action as a supply and industrial development watchdog.

The opening round of the revived transmission line fight left the consumer ombudsman on the sidelines. It was a murky affair of grand political and industrial strategy, debating new provincial legislation that enables the projects to go ahead without seeking to repeat a 2005 AEUB ruling that additional wires are needed.

The political fuss showed the power tangle is hotter and more complicated than ever as a result of civic rivalry that previously only simmered beneath the surface. Edmonton’s city-owned Epcor Inc. is defending its interests in current and planned coal-fired power stations by supporting new transmission lines to spread their output across the province. Calgary’s civic utility, Enmax Corp., rejects added wires as unnecessary if it is allowed to build new gas-fired generating projects in its own market area.

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