PITTSFIELD — Berkshire Gas is reducing gas bills during March and April after the company’s regulator ordered all the state’s natural gas utilities to give customers a discount amid soaring heating costs.
The company, a subsidiary of Avangrid, announced on Friday that it would cut residential gas bills for heating customers by 13.1 percent. It will also shave off 10 percent for residential nonheating customers, according to a statement from the company.
Customers will still have to pay back those savings. The money will be applied to “off-peak” bills from May through October, the company says, “in effect smoothing customers’ bills between peak and off-peak periods.”
Berkshire Gas is also working to change billing so that in future, bills will not spike during peak months but will reflect a more even “set cost” of a customer’s typical use.
The discount would result, for instance, in a $27.33 decrease for the average household heating customer use of 107 therms per month, according to the announcement. Therms are a measurement for gas consumption shown on gas bills.
For nonheating customers, the discount would be $4.07 for the average customer using 16 therms per month.
The discounts will continue for the March and April billing cycles, according to the company.
It was residents, lawmakers and Gov. Maura Healey that demanded the state Department of Public Utilities ease heating costs that had risen 27 percent this winter. The also pressed state Attorney General Andrea Campbell for action.
The DPU then ordered the state’s six gas companies to reduce rates by at least 5 percent for the rest of the peak heating season.
The DPU, in a Feb. 20 letter, told the companies that it could not order a reduction in February bills. The DPU had approved rate hikes in the fall.
“The combination of increased supply costs, the recovery of unusually high programmatic costs through delivery charges, and a cold winter,” DPU commissioners wrote, “has driven customer bills to unsustainable levels.”
Lawmakers and residents slammed the DPU’s order as paltry savings that customers will still have to pay back in the off-peak months, according to a number of news reports.
Berkshire Gas interim President Charlotte Ancel noted that natural gas is a commodity that “Berkshire Gas does not control or profit from.”
Ancel also noted that distribution costs for the company had actually fallen by 16 percent this year, and so “are not a factor in any bill increases felt by Berkshire Gas customers this season.”
Berkshire Gas offers, she said, “the lowest rates of any natural gas distribution company in Massachusetts.”
To smooth out customer bills over the course of a year rather than during the peak months, the company is working on a “budget billing” plan. The DPU asked companies to speed up those plans.
“This program allows customers to budget for the amount they owe each month to their utility to avoid surprise bills,” Ancel said.