Last month's holiday snowstorm knocked out the power at East Millcreek resident Ron Madsen's home, forcing him to pay $300 in hotel bills to keep his six children and wife from freezing.
The day after moving into the hotel, Madsen purchased a $1,200 generator to power his furnace blower and keep his refrigerator operating.
On Friday, the Committee of Consumer Services, the state's utility watchdog, asked the Utah Public Service Commission to suspend a 30-day filing deadline that Utah Power customers, like Madsen, must meet to file claims for compensation related to the outages.
That 30-day deadline comes Sunday for many customers who experienced outages beginning on the day after Christmas.
Under terms of the 1999 agreement that led to the merger of Utah Power parent company PacifiCorp and ScottishPower, the utility agreed residential customers could claim $50 if electricity was not restored within 24 hours and $25 for each additional 12-hour delay, barring damage caused by extreme weather.
However, the holiday outages pose a serious question — whether a deteriorated electric grid or lack of tree-trimming contributed to the failure and left the utility partially culpable for the extensive outages.
A formal investigation by state regulators is ongoing.
Even if regulators decide people should be able to collect on their claims, it may be too little, too late for customers like the Madsens, whose power was out for five days.
"In view of how long our power was out, the $50 is pretty much meaningless compared to how much we spent," said Madsen, who has yet to file a claim. "I typically do a lot of my work from my house, and I really wasn't able to do that because I was running around trying to take care of kids, getting generators and refrigerators hooked up and trying to figure out how to run the generator without filling the house with exhaust."
Madsen may be entitled to nearly $250 under terms of the utility's customer guarantee program should the Public Service Commission reject the outages as a "major event," a classification that exempts the utility from making payments to customers who experience an extended outage.
Dave Eskelsen, a spokesman for Utah Power, said the company has previously indicated that it would be flexible in terms of the 30-day deadline in processing any claims, "although our feeling . . . that this was a major weather event still stands.
"The company has not officially requested major event status for this event because we are in the midst of a formal inquiry," Eskelsen said.
Roger Ball, director of the Committee of Consumer Services, said a few thousand people so far have filed claims.
The committee's filing on Friday also asked the Public Service Commission to order Utah Power to inform its customers by means of an insert in billing statements and/or through media advertising of the ongoing investigation and the possibility customers may be entitled to a guarantee credit for the outage.
E-mail: danderton@desnews.com