Thousands Miss Out on Pa. Utility Assistance, but Regulators Aren’t Sold on Plans for Automatic Enrollment

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HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s electric and natural gas companies are required to offer discounted bills to low-income customers, but for years the programs have reached only a fraction of those who qualify.

Now the long-running debate about how to increase the number of customers getting help is taking on new urgency as utility bills skyrocket and shutoffs hit record highs.

A new data-sharing system could help increase participation, but opposition from the state Public Utility Commission is thwarting efforts to use the data in the way consumer advocates argue would be most effective: allowing utilities to automatically sign up eligible customers.

Between 2014 and 2024, about 22% of eligible natural gas customers and 23% of eligible electric customers received assistance each year, according to state data. (Data for 2025 and 2026 aren’t yet available.)

The data-sharing initiative, which has taken years to develop, could significantly increase participation rates.

When applying for help from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), customers can consent to share their income information with their utility company. That allows people to sign up for assistance from their utility without having to document their income a second time.

Advocates and some utilities want to go one step further and use the data to automatically enroll eligible customers — without requiring them to take any further action.

“Income-eligible customers should not be overpaying for electricity when there is an easy, automatic method” to sign them up for assistance, Duquesne Light Company, which serves the Pittsburgh area, said in a July filing.

But automatic enrollment faces opposition from a key member of the PUC.

In several regulatory proceedings over the past year, commission Chair Stephen DeFrank, has raised objections to such proposals.

DeFrank supports utilities using the LIHEAP data to contact eligible customers and streamline the application process. But he strongly opposes utilities’ plans to make enrollment the default option and have customers opt out if they don’t want to participate.

In a statement, a PUC spokesperson said DeFrank wants to ensure that “efforts intended to help customers do not inadvertently affect other consumer rights or choices.”

Pennsylvania should make it as straightforward as possible for vulnerable residents to get help they urgently need, said Elizabeth Marx, executive director of the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project, which advocates for low-income customers and has argued in favor of auto-enrollment to the commission.

Rejecting that approach, Marx said, is like “trudging up a hill when there’s a shortcut,” she said.

‘Cumbersome processes’

The assistance offered by utility companies is a lifeline for many customers.

Electric and natural gas utilities are required to offer discounted bills to customers with incomes at or below 150% of the federal poverty level, roughly $24,000 for a single person.

Many participants pay a monthly bill tied to a percentage of their income. Customers who fell behind before entering the program can also have their debts forgiven if they make regular payments at the discounted rate.

The programs are the single most effective tool for ensuring low-income customers’ bills are affordable, advocates say. Customers who qualify but aren’t enrolled are more likely to fall behind and have their service shut off, according to data submitted in recent utility rate cases.

But for years, most people who could benefit from the programs haven’t signed up.

Between 2014 and 2024, less than a quarter of estimated eligible customers received help from their electric or natural gas company’s program in a typical year, state data show.

Enrollment rates vary from utility to utility and some companies say state estimates, which are based on census data, overstate the number of customers who qualify.

Many customers don’t know the assistance is available, don’t realize they could qualify, or struggle to navigate the sometimes confusing patchwork of available programs, advocates say. Each utility runs its own bill discount program, with different applications, eligibility requirements, and sometimes different names: LIRA, CAP, OnTrack.

It can also be difficult for customers to compile the paperwork necessary to document their income, particularly if, like many gig workers, they don’t receive a consistent paycheck.

The most common reason that customers lose benefits is failing to reverify their income to prove they still qualify. “Significant paperwork”, “unreasonably short” deadlines and “cumbersome processes” contribute to the churn, the Office of Consumer Advocate noted during the 2023 review.

Utilities say they conduct extensive outreach and marketing to educate customers about the programs — including letters, emails, phone calls, and events — and contract with community nonprofits that help people apply.

A 2024 evaluation of the program offered by UGI, one of the largest utility companies in Pennsylvania, found that after UGI ramped up its outreach efforts, enrollment increased.

Still, in a survey of customers who qualified for the program but were not signed up, only 27% said they knew it existed, according to the evaluation. “There is not sufficient awareness of the program among potential customers, and sometimes even UGI staff,” the report noted.

And while the company had removed one obstacle by no longer requiring customers to apply in person, the report found, UGI still didn’t offer the option to apply online. A UGI spokesperson told Spotlight PA the company is “exploring the possibility” of developing an online application, but “a definitive timeline has not been determined.”

What to do with the data?

The data-sharing effort was conceived more than a decade ago as a solution to some of the obstacles to growing enrollment.

A separate program administered by the state — the Low Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) — has the same income threshold to qualify. But many people who receive LIHEAP grants are not enrolled in their utility’s program, missing out on a potentially more generous form of aid.

If the state shared income data from LIHEAP recipients, utilities could enroll those customers without requiring them to fill out another round of paperwork. Another benefit: utilities could use the data to confirm that customers already receiving assistance still qualify.

The Philadelphia Water Department began automatically signing up some eligible customers for its bill discount program in 2023 through a separate process. By the end of fiscal year 2026, almost 50,000 customers had been auto-enrolled, a spokesperson told Spotlight PA. City officials recognized that despite traditional outreach efforts, including canvassing and direct mail, many customers still faced barriers to applying, the spokesperson said.

When the PUC conducted a wide-ranging review of utility assistance in 2023, both utility companies and consumer advocates expressed support for the nascent data-sharing effort. There was fierce disagreement, however, about whether those data should be used for automatic enrollment.

“It makes little sense to require an individual to provide the same information multiple times, in multiple ways, on different applications to enroll in similar programs,” the Office of Consumer Advocate argued.

Some utilities disagreed, arguing that not all eligible customers want or need the assistance. Some also questioned whether customers who shop for their energy supplier in Pennsylvania’s competitive retail market would agree to revert to their utility’s default service — a condition of signing up for assistance.

In addition, if automatic enrollment achieved its goal of significantly boosting enrollment, some utilities warned, it would make the programs more expensive. In Pennsylvania, those costs are paid only by residential ratepayers; other states with similar programs spread the expense across industrial and commercial customers too.

After a few false starts, Pennsylvania began sharing LIHEAP data with utility companies last summer.

The data only include customers who have checked a box on the LIHEAP application giving permission for their information to be shared “to help enroll me in a utility assistance program.”

Costs and benefits

In late 2024, Peoples Natural Gas filed a petition seeking the PUC’s approval for its plan to automatically enroll eligible customers based on the LIHEAP data.

The company, which serves 18 counties in Western Pennsylvania, agreed to do so as part of a settlement reached when it filed to increase its rates in 2023. The utility’s proposal focused on a particularly vulnerable subset of customers, people who were still more than $300 behind after receiving a LIHEAP grant.

In an October 2025 statement, DeFrank, the PUC chair, argued that participating in the assistance program involved sacrifices as well as benefits, which he says customers need to be informed about.

Customers who sign up for assistance and then fall behind on the discounted bills generally cannot receive a payment arrangement for that debt.

The Coalition for Affordable Utility Services and Energy Efficiency in Pennsylvania, which advocates for low-income customers, countered that preserving potential access to a payment arrangement “would likely not outweigh the benefits” of participating in the assistance program. Customers who can afford to pay their new and lower monthly bills are less likely to need a payment arrangement in the first place, the group said.

Another commissioner, John Coleman, said he generally did not support auto-enrollment and questioned whether it was necessary.

After months of back and forth with the PUC, Peoples backed away from its auto-enrollment plan earlier this year. It now plans to send eligible customers who have received LIHEAP grants a welcome letter inviting them to sign up.

In an exasperated response, the coalition of low-income advocates said the PUC “continues to put up roadblocks to the implementation of data driven solutions” that would provide “immediate rate relief” to thousands of households.

People whose incomes are low enough to qualify for utility aid, the group said, “spend an inordinate amount of time filling out forms, submitting paperwork, and fighting through all sorts of red tape in an attempt to prove they need assistance.”

Duquesne Light Company’s request to pursue auto-enrollment is still pending.

In June, DeFrank said he did not support the proposal and raised concerns about how the company would handle customers who had shopped for their electricity supplier. Customers must be returned to the utility’s default service as a condition of signing up for assistance but Duquesne Light hadn’t clarified how it would obtain customers’ consent, DeFrank said.

In response, the company said it would clearly explain this to customers during the opt-out window. Eligible customers who shopped for their supplier paid on average $264 more in the last year than if they had stayed on the company’s default service, Duquesne Light said in a filing.

So far, only one company has received the PUC’s approval to automatically enroll customers in its assistance program: UGI Electric, which serves roughly 63,000 households in two counties in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

In a statement filed in that case, DeFrank said the company’s small size played a role in his decision not to oppose its auto-enrollment system. Still, he urged it to abandon the opt-out model in favor of one in which customers sign up.

At a recent commission meeting, Vice Chair Kimberly Barrow said she would have preferred Peoples Natural Gas to continue its plan for auto-enrollment and hoped the company would propose it again.

Across the state, the assistance programs’ participation gap is “way too wide,” she said. “I know there are a lot of unmet needs and I hope to see that tightened up on.”

DeFrank said he respected Barrow’s position and agreed that more people need help. On the question of auto-enrollment, he said, “I just have a different viewpoint.”

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