Texas regulators last week approved a stipulated settlement of a CenterPoint Energy rate case that was a little more than 8% of the utility’s original request (49421).

The Public Utility Commission showed CenterPoint little love during its open meeting Friday, signing off on a $13 million settlement. The Houston utility had requested a $161 million recovery in April 2019, saying it had increased its customer base by 20%, installed 2.5 million smart meters and invested $6 billion in facilities since January 2010.

The agreement also reduces CenterPoint’s return on equity from 10% to 9.4%. It had asked for 10.4%.

CenterPoint filed the proposed settlement agreement in January. Parties included PUC staff; the Office of Public Utility Counsel; the city of Houston and other city coalitions; Texas Industrial Energy Consumers; Alliance for Retail Markets; Texas Energy Association for Marketers; and Texas Competitive Power Advocates.

The PUC also approved a rate-case-expense rider for Entergy Texas, allowing the utility to recover $6.4 million (48439).

The commission approved two settlement agreements resulting in $775,000 in administrative penalties:

• EDF Energy Services was docked $475,000 for failing to reserve sufficient capacity to meet its responsive reserve service obligations (50304).
• Oncor was penalized $300,000 over annual service quality (50350).

— Tom Kleckner