Residential customers of Puget Sound Energy (PSE) will see short-term reductions on their next electric bill after the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC) agreed to allow the utilities to pass through temporary federal-power credits from the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA).

The average PSE residential customer will see a one-time $22.44 credit on their mid-April to mid-May bill.

BPA had suspended the credits after a federal court held last year that the agency’s formula for distributing benefits of the Columbia River hydropower system violated federal law. On Feb. 22, BPA said it would restore a part of those benefits temporarily until a new long-term formula is developed later this year.

At its recent public meeting, the UTC accepted the company’ plans on how it would distribute the temporary payments to its customers. By law, the UTC does not determine the amount of BPA benefits.

BPA provides private utilities in the Northwest with benefits equal to the difference between the cost of the private utility’s power and that of a like amount of BPA’s power. BPA has provided the so-called residential exchange credit to private utilities since 1981 under the federal Power Act.

However, BPA stopped the payments last year in response to a federal court ruling that the formula BPA used to distribute benefits violated federal law.

The BPA interim agreements provide a one-time benefit of $53.7 million to PSE.