The Louisiana Public Service Commission approved two SWEPCO matters on June 19 offered by North Louisiana PSC member Foster Campbell, D-Bossier City.

Campbell’s PSC District 5 includes the majority of SWEPCO’s 12-parish territory.  He proposed that SWEPCO immediately refund $23 million that was mistakenly billed by the electric utility during 2022 and 2023.

Campbell also persuaded the commission to conduct a service-quality investigation of SWEPCO because of frequent outages.

“We have had a lot of outages in Northwest Louisiana,” he said.  “We need to look at SWEPCO to see if service can be improved.”

Campbell said one area near Shreveport had seen 10 outages already this year.

SWEPCO caught the $23-million accounting error during a PSC review of the company’s billing during the years 2022 and 2023.  Campbell asked that the money be credited to customer bills during July, August and September.

“Those are the hottest months with the highest bills,” he said.

For the average SWEPCO residential customer using 1,250 kilowatt-hours per month, the credit will amount to $21 per month, or a total of $63 for the three-month period.

Actual bill credits will depend on customer usage.