Maryland House Bill HB0642

Maryland 2026 Regular Session

Caption

Electric Companies - Service Outages and Rate Increases - Report on Customer Impact

Summary

HB0642 requires each electric company in Maryland to submit an annual report to the Public Service Commission by April 1 covering the immediately preceding year. The report must include geographic and demographic data on customers affected by certain service outages and by rate increases. Covered outages include outages lasting two hours or longer, outages caused by scheduled maintenance regardless of duration, and outages occurring during inclement weather, with the report also identifying how long it took to restore service. The bill is aimed at improving transparency and giving regulators a clearer picture of which communities are most affected by outages and utility rate changes. By requiring customer-impact data to be broken down geographically and demographically, it would add a new reporting obligation to the Public Utilities Article and create a recurring data collection requirement for electric companies. The act would take effect October 1, 2026.

Impact

If enacted, HB0642 would add a new section to the Public Utilities Article requiring electric companies to file annual customer-impact reports with the Public Service Commission. It would not directly change rates or outage response standards, but it would expand regulatory reporting and data disclosure obligations for utilities, potentially affecting how the Commission monitors service reliability and rate impacts across different communities.

Sentiment

Based on the bill text and available legislative context, the bill appears to be framed as a consumer-protection and transparency measure rather than a punitive utility regulation. There are no recorded votes or committee transcripts in the provided material, so there is no documented opposition or support from hearings; however, the sponsorship and subject matter suggest an interest in accountability for electric service reliability and rate-setting impacts.

Contention

The main point of potential contention is the scope and burden of the reporting requirement on electric companies, especially the need to collect and report geographic and demographic data for outages and rate increases. Utilities may view the mandate as administratively burdensome or question how the data will be used, while supporters are likely to emphasize the value of identifying disparate impacts on customers and communities. Another possible issue is whether demographic reporting raises privacy, methodology, or data-quality concerns, though none are specifically discussed in the provided record.