EPHRATA — Grant County PUD employees will recommend phasing in the new “emerging industries” rate class over a period of three to four years. That announcement came during a workshop on the proposed emerging industries class for PUD commissioners Tuesday.

The new Class 17 was prompted by a flood of inquiries for service in summer and fall 2017. Many of them came from potential customers working with cryptocurrency, which uses a technology called blockchain. A blockchain can be shared by all people or companies involved in a transaction, and it can be updated by anybody involved, at any time. A lot of the current use of blockchain is for cryptocurrency, but it can be adapted to other uses.

Cryptocurrency can be a large commercial operation, or it can be set up in a residential area, like a shed. Under the current proposal, the basic electricity charge for Class 17 customers in residential areas would be $1.04 per day, plus 13.7 cents per kilowatt hour.

For Class 17 customers that use more than 200KW per hour, the basic charge would be $1,000 per month and 7.09 cents per kilowatt hour. Those customers also would pay a demand charge, $6 per kilowatt during the billing period.

Jeremy Nolan of the PUD’s accounting department said the first criteria in determining if a business will qualify for Class 17 is the amount of electricity used by that class. The “concentration risk” is of interest not only to the PUD and to the utility's other customers, but also to the financial agencies that evaluate the PUD’s ability to pay back its bonds.

If there’s concentration risk, the next step in evaluating potential inclusion in Class 17 is “regulatory risk,” whether or not the industry class is subject to regulation that will affect its ability to stay in business. The third is “business risk,” evaluating the business’s long term liability.

If an industry meets the threshold for concentration risk, it must meet the criteria for one of the other two risk factors to be considered for the emerging industries class, Nolan said.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].