Concord's town-owned utility is about to make customers pay for a five-year accounting error through higher monthly electric bills.
According to The Concord Bridge, that recovery starts with October bills: the average household will see roughly $6.74 added each month for the next five years while Concord Municipal Light Plant makes up $6.6 million in revenue it failed to collect.
Here's what to know
After an audit concluded residents had been underbilled for years, the Light Board approved an added charge at its Sept. 23 meeting. The rate is $0.00728 per kilowatt-hour, or about $400 over five years for a home with average electricity use.
New accountants reviewing CMLP's 2025 financial statements uncovered the problem. In a memo to the Light Board, director Jason Bulger said the utility's power cost adjustment formula omitted "line loss," meaning electricity that is lost as it moves through lines and transformers.
That detail matters because the formula is how the utility tracks changes in wholesale power prices. Using the flawed version that had been in place since 2021, CMLP officials believed customers were due $4.8 million in refunds for overcharges.
Once line loss was included, however, the numbers flipped and showed that customers had actually been paying too little. The result is both a new surcharge and the disappearance of a monthly credit that had been worth about $3.70 for an average household.
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More background
Because the credit appeared on bills for years, customers had reason to think it was legitimate while the mistake went undetected. At the Sept. 23 meeting, Light Board member Warren Leon said, "I'm concerned that we and the former auditors look like dummies for not knowing about this."
The problem centers on a routine piece of utility accounting. CMLP buys electricity and delivers it to local customers, while budget writers forecast what that power will cost; the power cost adjustment is supposed to square those estimates with actual wholesale-price changes by either returning money or collecting more.
For Concord residents, that means a double hit in October: the $3.70 monthly credit goes away at the same time the added charge begins, Bulger told The Concord Bridge.
Light Board member Nicole Grosner asked whether the formula could be fixed without making residents cover the prior five years of underbilling. Bulger said he did not think auditors would allow CMLP to absorb the loss itself.
What's being done?
CMLP said future calculations will include line loss. The board also settled on how to recover the $6.6 million shortfall.
Members considered recovery periods of three, four, and five years. Leon favored the five-year option to spread the burden out and keep the monthly increase as low as possible.
Utility officials also said they have replaced former auditor CBIZ CPAs with Goulet, Salvidio & Associates, which they said was selected in part because it specializes in municipal light plants.
During the discussion, Leon also said that "the fact that nobody noticed this problem" for so long suggested it was worth correcting but not urgent. Even so, customers will start seeing the effect on October bills.
Where can I learn more?
Concord's billing error also fits into a broader debate over who ends up paying when utility costs rise.
• PacifiCorp asked regulators to approve billing customers for $1.7 billion in wildfire damages.
• In North Carolina, Duke Energy faced claims that its practices would hit ratepayers directly.
• Utilities nationwide drew scrutiny for spending electricity bills on transmission projects customers may not need.
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