PSC certifies annual fuel and management audits for Mississippi Power and Entergy Mississippi
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Summary
The commission certified fiscal-year audits for Mississippi Power and Entergy Mississippi to the legislature, receiving clean opinions and a set of recommendations from contract auditors; commissioners discussed fuel mix, generation and the potential rate impacts of large industrial customers.
The Public Service Commission certified the annual financial and management fuel audits for Mississippi Power and Entergy Mississippi and will forward those certifications to the state legislature as required by statute.
Will Crawford of Forbus presented Mississippi Power's fuel audit and reported an unmodified (clean) opinion, saying "the information that we have audited matches dollar for dollar the information that has been previously filed with the commission." He reported no findings or recommended changes and described site visits and tests of controls used in the audit.
Bates White (Vincent Musko) presented a management and procurement review for Mississippi Power covering Oct. 1, 2024, to Sept. 30, 2025. Musko said his team identified no major concerns but offered six recommendations, including more thorough assessment of Plant Daniel's ongoing viability, added documentation for fixed-price gas transactions, revisiting fossil-fuel policy language on storage allocations and requiring hourly documentation for changes to minimum operating levels.
LEI (Miss Porto) summarized the Entergy Mississippi management performance audit and reported 11 findings with recommendations for organizational, operations and procurement improvements; some items will remain confidential in the audit record. BDO (Mr. Green) said its audit of Entergy Mississippi's fuel and purchased energy costs yielded a clean opinion, reporting total fuel and purchased energy cost of approximately $369,000,000 and net allowable cost after adjustments of approximately $216,000,000; about 70% (roughly $260 million) of those costs related to natural gas.
Commissioners asked a range of follow-up questions about fuel mix and generation resources. Several commissioners stressed the importance of reliable generation capacity; one said combined-cycle units are roughly 40% more efficient and large industrial customers (for example, data centers) can provide revenues that offset rate increases for other customers. Staff said that after certification, commission staff will work with utility staff on orders to implement auditors' recommendations, with those orders typically presented in May or June.
The commission recorded a vote approving the administrative items to certify the audits to the legislature.