Residential utility customer arrearages will likely skyrocket amidst plummeting income and employment loss during the Covid-19 crisis. How big will the problem be?
The answer depends on just how many customers will be unable to keep up with payments in the weeks to come. The tables that follow depict disparate home electricity burdens and expenditures, and a range of state and national residential electric utility arrearage scenarios. They draw on customer and revenue data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), poverty data from the U.S. Census Bureau, and burden data calculated using EIA Residential Energy Consumption Survey microdata.