Victoria – The Province is extending BC Hydro’s Customer Crisis Fund (CCF) to continue providing support for people in financial crisis and help avoid disconnections of their electricity service.
The CCF program allows eligible BC Hydro customers who are facing a financial hardship due to a job loss, injury, illness or loss of a family member, and possible disconnection of their service, to access grants of up to $600 to pay their BC Hydro bill. A pilot of the CCF program ended on May 31, 2021, at the expiration of its three-year term.
Since it was launched, the CCF has helped over 11,000 residential customers.
Government has issued a direction to the B.C. Utilities Commission to enable BC Hydro to continue offering grants through the CCF.
The CCF pilot program was funded by a monthly charge (rate rider) of 13 cents that was added to residential customers’ bills. The temporary continuation of the CCF will be funded through an existing surplus of approximately $5.9 million that represents the difference between revenues already collected through the monthly customer charge and the costs of providing the program. BC Hydro stopped applying the rate rider to customers’ bills effective June 1, 2021.
