Rate review case hearing examiner criticizes PREPA’s delays

Scott Hempling, the hearing examiner overseeing the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s rate review case (LinkedIn)

By THE STAR STAFF

The hearing examiner overseeing the rate review case of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) gave the public power utility until July 7 to provide to LUMA Energy its revenue requirement, questioning whether PREPA can carry out its statutory functions.

Scott Hempling, the hearing examiner, said PREPA has known since December 2024 that there was going to be a rate case in 2025 to update all power rates. However, PREPA has been slow to provide the information, causing LUMA to miss deadlines to in turn provide required information in the case to the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau.

“My Order of June 20, 2025, required PREPA to provide its proposed revenue requirement and accompanying testimony to LUMA by June 25, 2025,” Hempling said in a written statement. “That deadline was PREPA’s chosen deadline -- one whose obvious lateness, given LUMA’s July 3 deadline to submit the consolidated application, has already caused inconvenience to all.”

On June 23, PREPA filed an urgent motion seeking an extension to July 7.

“A party that ‘respectfully requests’ an extension after a deadline has passed is not respectfully requesting; it is demanding,” Hempling added.

PREPA, the hearing examiner said, talks of the pressures it faced in the past few weeks, “but PREPA tells us nothing about the past six months -- the months since December 2024 when it became clear that there would be a rate case in 2025.”

“PREPA’s behavior, and its excuse-making, reminds me of a Little League game 60 years ago. I was playing right field. The batted ball went over my head. I dashed back and made a circus catch. Everyone applauded,” Hempling said. “Next inning, as I prepared to bat, I said to my Dad -- who was sitting behind home plate -- ‘How’d you like that catch?’ He said, ‘You should have started earlier.’ PREPA should have started earlier. Everyone watching this situation -- this Hearing Examiner, the Energy Bureau’s consultants, the Commissioners, the bondholders, the customers, the public, FOMB [Financial Oversight and Management Board], the Legislature, the Governor, P3A [Public-Private Partnership Authority], AAFAF [Puerto Rico Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority], everyone -- has to be wondering whether PREPA is capable of carrying out its statutory functions.”