‘We will fix it’: Nova Scotia Power CEO apologizes for high estimated bills after breach

The CEO of Nova Scotia Power was grilled over the cyberattack and high estimated bills at a government committee meeting.

The president and CEO of Nova Scotia Power says he recognizes the utility has lost trust with its customers and is working to restore that trust after hearing their frustrations over the cyberattack and high estimated bills.

Peter Gregg made the comments before a government committee meeting Tuesday afternoon.

“I want to acknowledge and apologize for the concern and disruption this has caused,” said Gregg. “My promise to you is that if we have overestimated your bill, we will fix it. If you have overpaid, we will fix it. And if we make a mistake, we will fix it.”

Gregg added the incident was an unprecedented, sophisticated and targeted attack.

“There’s a high degree of confidence that the activity was closely associated with the Russia-based threat actor group,” he said.

Gregg declined publicly stating the cost of the cyberattack, but maintained customers won’t pay for it.           

The CEO also addressed the removal of social insurance numbers from Nova Scotia Power’s systems, saying it will be complete by March 31 at the latest, adding it’s yet to be done due to simultaneous investigations.

PC MLA Kyle MacQuarrie — a member of the Natural Resources and Economic Development Committee — said he requested the meeting with Nova Scotia Power after constituents reached out to him regarding inflated bills.

NDP and Opposition Leader Claudia Chender told the committee meeting she has received many emails from constituents who are fed up with the utility and their estimated bills, which in some cases have been double what they’re used to paying.

“I have to be worried about my identity and credit for the rest of my life due to no fault of my own, but Nova Scotia Power gets to send me a bill for twice what I owe,” one constituent reportedly wrote to Chender in an email Tuesday morning.

“Pissed off does not begin to cover my current outlook.”

Why has Nova Scotia Power been estimating bills?

Chris Lanteigne, director of customer care for Nova Scotia Power, said the meters on customers’ homes are accurately recording their energy usage, but the utility’s ability to “talk to those meters” was lost after the cyberbreach, which was first detected on April 25.

Gregg said the utility has been sending meter readers around the province to get accurate readings, noting about 75 per cent of customers should be receiving accurate bills, while the rest are receiving estimates.

When pushed on why some customers are receiving sky-high bills, Gregg said the system “was never designed to estimate that number of bills.”

“It was meant to be for more one-off situations, so we’ve been tuning the system as much as we can,” said the CEO. “We haven’t always got it right and that’s why you’re seeing some of these overestimations.”

Chender continued to push Gregg and Lanteigne, asking why the utility isn’t looking at amounts from the same billing period last year.

“We have never had to estimate this volume of bills for this period of time, so the system is drawing on usage from the previous year,” said Lanteigne. “We cannot just make a change to pick the same bill amount from the previous year.”

Gregg said Nova Scotia Power is working to restore the communication system between its meters and billing system and he expects it to be fully restored by the end of March.

Until then, the utility says it won’t be charging late fees or interest to customers whose bills are too high.

“Restoring all systems will take time, but we are providing flexible options for our customers, such as equal billing, pay-what-you-can arrangements and photo meter reads until we’re able to reconnect our systems and provide up-to-date bills,” said Gregg.

Nova Scotia Power previously said roughly 277,000 customers were impacted by the cyberbreach, but a report in September revealed all customers may have been affected.

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