By Tara Fischer

Staff Writer

(Nov. 12, 2026) Berlin electric customers will receive credits on their November utility bills to make up for an error in the calculation of the town’s Power Cost Adjustment (PCA) charge.

During a Berlin Town Council meeting this week, Finance Director Natalie Saleh said the error involved the adjustment’s “Actual Cost Adjustment”(ACA) factor, which is used in calculating the amount customers pay for electricity based on their monthly kilowatt-hour usage.

The PCA is applied to each electric customer’s bill, with the ACA factor serving as part of the calculation used to account for the town’s actual power costs.

Saleh said the ACA factor typically goes through several approval steps before the town submits it to the Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC). The commission reviews the factor to determine whether the town is recovering its full power costs or whether an adjustment is needed.

Town officials discovered that an error in the PCA factor — a calculation of $0.0013 —had been applied as an addition rather than a subtraction, affecting bills from April through October.

After notifying the PSC, town representatives participated in a virtual meeting with the PSC to discuss how to correct the error. Saleh said the commission advised that the town could continue with the existing calculations and make an adjustment based on a 12-month average in December.

Instead, town staff decided to recalculate each individual customer’s bills dating back to April, allowing the municipality to issue credits based on actual electricity usage.

The town submitted its proposed correction to the PSC, which approved the approach.

As a result, customers will see a positive adjustment, or credit, on their November electric bills. The amount will vary depending on how many kilowatt-hours each residential or commercial customer used during the affected months.

“Our staff decided it would be a better approach to go back all the way to April, pull every single individual month, recalculate all the bills April through October and generate a credit for each electric user,” Saleh said.

Berlin Mayor Zack Tyndall said the mistake in calculating the PCA charge had gone unnoticed initially by both the town and the PSC.

He added that while the PSC initially preferred to wait until later to process the repayments, town officials wanted to address the issue sooner.

Customers will receive the credits directly on their accounts as part of the November billing cycle.