OF LIMITED UTILITY

By Phoebe Sweet (contact)

Monday, Aug. 13, 2007 | 7:14 a.m.

We're guessing you don't know what a "consolidated annual deferred energy account adjustment" is.

So, you and most of Southwest Gas Corp.'s 642,000 Nevada customers probably didn't read the notice that landed in your mail box the other day.

It was a formal notice from the natural gas provider about how our bills are figured and why we pay what we pay. It likely left you glassy-eyed.

Why can't the utility companies talk to us in plain English when it comes to our money?

Because the legally mandated language has to be very, very, very precise, according to regulators and utilities.

"We purposely don't write them so they're hard to read," said Cynthia Messina, spokeswoman for Southwest Gas. "We have legal obligations to put certain information in there."

That's why it takes a page-long notice filled with complicated charts and convoluted, arcane sentences to explain that the company recovers the cost of gas from customers.

So there are phrases in the notice about a "delivery charge to recover higher variable rate interest expense" and a "decrease to the shrinkage rate applicable to transportation customers."

Messina admits it's Greek to most of us, "a language that most people are not used to reading."

Nevada Power spokeswoman Andrea Smith said there's only so much a utility can do, although the electric company goes so far as to define the terms used in its bills on the flip side and on its Web site.

"A lot of what's contained in those notices and on our bills is legally required information," she said. "We do try to make it as simple as possible. It's a challenge."

And there's meaning behind it, says Rick Hackman, manager of the consumer complaint resolution division at the Nevada Public Utilities Commission.

"It matters to us whether a portion of a kilowatt hour is based on fuel costs or overhead or profit. We tend to somewhat overanalyze these things," Hackman said. "That translates to the utility bill itself."

He said the PUC has struggled for years to make bills and communications from state-regulated utilities - whether they sell electricity, gas or phone service - easier to read.

"It's always a work in progress. What most people want to know is how much they are paying, bottom line, for a unit of energy," Hackman said. "In the interest of trying to give an abundance of explanation to this , we end up confusing the customer."

Eric Witkoski, state consumer advocate, said he's worked hard with utilities and the state to make sure consumers even see the notices that come with their bills. They've even used fluorescent colors.

"We put so much emphasis on getting the right color so people can see it," he said. "Maybe we need to take another look to see if people can understand it."

Here, by the way, is what you need to understand about the most recent gas company billing notice: Our opening reference to "consolidated annual deferred energy account adjustment" has to do with any change in the cost of gas that is passed through to the customer.

And the bottom line in the current billing notice: The amount that the gas company needs to collect from us won't be changing this time around.