Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. and Delmarva Power customers are jointly owed more than $32 million, according to the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel. But the potential refund is stalled because of a disagreement over how to interpret state laws.

Filings with state regulators show that in 2025, BGE over-collected $28 million from its customers, while Delmarva over-collected $4.27 million.

In July, the Office of People’s Counsel, the state ratepayer advocate, asked BGE to refund the excess payments from utility customers. BGE’s legal representatives declined and pointed to recent changes in public utility laws that it believes exempt the time period in question.

Now, the Office of People’s Counsel is asking the Maryland Public Service Commission to hold a hearing to sort out the policies.

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“The PSC created a path for a rate adjustment when there is a ‘significant disparity between [the utility’s] revenues and expenses to the detriment of ratepayers,’” People’s Counsel David Lapp said in a statement. “That is the case here, and the PSC should require BGE and Delmarva Power to refund the excess revenues the utilities collected from customers.”

But in BGE’s view, “the type of after-the-fact review that would be needed to refund a prior-year overcollection is no longer available under current law,” spokesman Nick Alexopulos said in a statement.

BGE and Delmarva set electricity and gas rates for three years at a time instead of adjusting them annually. The five-member Public Service Commission must approve those rates.

The Next Generation Energy Act of 2025 changed the public utility law for reconciliation, or the process of comparing what the utility planned to spend versus what it actually spent. Before a company can cut rates or charge them more in the coming year, the commission must sign off.

In the 2025 law, utility companies can no longer file for reconciliation, unless the reconciliation was filed on or before Jan. 1, 2025.

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But state lawmakers changed the reconciliation process again when they passed the Utility RELIEF Act earlier this year, and they did not make those changes retroactive.

That appears to have left an opening for the Exelon companies to decline refunding money to customers.

The commission’s technical staff sided with the Exelon utilities’ interpretation of the laws.

“The legislature clearly could have chosen to make the new law retroactive, but it did not. The law, as written, contains no references that would assume a retroactive application of the law,” they wrote in an Aug. 21 filing.

The Public Service Commission has the final say and has not yet responded to the OPC’s request for a hearing.

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BGE has an estimated 1.3 million electric customers and 700,000 gas customers in Baltimore City and eight other Maryland counties. It’s the largest utility in the state.

BGE over-collected on gas revenues last year, Alexopulos said. However, “there was an even greater undercollection on electric revenues.”

Delmarva primarily serves electric and natural gas customers in Delaware but has more than 217,000 electric customers in Maryland.