The Public Utilities Commission agreed Tuesday to accept NV Energy’s offer to pay more than $63 million to customers who were overcharged by the utility since 2002.
The agreement comes after NV Energy initially attempted to pay back just a fraction of the amount it overcharged customers, contended the PUC had no authority to order the utility to pay back all of the money, and threatened to go to court.
Consumer complaints about insufficient refunds from NV Energy prompted PUC staff to launch an investigation in May of last year into the misclassification of “tens of thousands of multi-family residential customers as single-family customers” going back to 2002.
Weeks later, state lawmakers took up a bill that requires utilities to fully refund overcharged amounts.
NV Energy initially provided refunds under a rule that called for refunds going back six months. PUC staff and the Attorney General’s Bureau of Consumer Protection argued the rule invoked by NV Energy was inapplicable, as it is meant for customers who apply for the wrong classification of service, not errors on the part of the utility.
In September 2025, NV Energy identified misclassification errors affecting 42,856 multi-family customers (7,767 in Northern Nevada and 37,571 in Southern Nevada) and extended the refund period from its initial offer of going back six months to reimbursing overcharges back to 2017 and with interest at the same rate as its customer deposits.
PUC staff objected to limiting refunds to any period, stating the “appropriate refund amount was a full refund (with interest) computed back to the established date on which the error or omission commenced, which Staff estimated was in 2002 for many customers.”
In November, NV Energy estimated the total amount of overcharges at $65,477,461. PUC staff determined the estimate was reasonable.
But in early January, NV Energy asserted the PUC lacked jurisdiction to require NV Energy to refund the overpayments, and said the decision would be up to the courts. Two weeks later, NV Energy filed an offer of compromise in which it agreed the utility’s shareholders would pay more than $63 million to affected ratepayers.
“It’s unacceptable that it took NV Energy so long to do the right thing,” Chispa Nevada Program Director Audrey Peral said in a news release following Tuesday’s meeting. “If it weren’t for NV Energy customers raising the issue with PUCN staff, the public would never know about this.”
Pearl went on to say the utility “has a long history of harming the customers it serves, yet the PUCN continuously has allowed the company to increase its profits and raise prices, now through new demand charges.”
On April 1, the utility is slated to begin basing monthly power bills on usage during the 15-minute period of the day with the highest consumption, a billing scheme that is not employed by any other private utility in the U.S., experts say.
Under the PUC order approved Tuesday, NV Energy is expected to issue bill credits and checks within 120 days and no more than 210 days. The utility agreed to employ the same terms for newly-discovered overcharges resulting from misclassification.
