Opinion ID: 1851827
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Customer Preference

Text: The Commission found that the customer had a preference for one supplier, but no objection to the other. While we have previously said that customer preference should be considered, we never have held that it is controlling. Application of Otter Tail Power Co., supra ; Application of Northern States Power Co., 171 N.W.2d 751 (N.D.1969). Certainly, customer preference has nothing to do with selection of a supplier of electricity inside a municipality such as Jamestown, where only one supplier is franchised. In such places the customer must accept service from the franchised supplier unless he chooses to generate his own electricity or go without. In rural areas, our decisions indicate, customer preference is a minor consideration. It cannot prevail where economic factors, such as relative costs and wasteful duplication, provide other criteria for choice. As we said in Application of Montana-Dakota Utilities Co., 219 N.W.2d 174, 181 (N.D.1974): . . . customer preference does not govern the Commission in its decision but subjects the customer's preference for a regulated public utility service to an inquiry and decision by the Commission on the question of public convenience and necessity. Customer preference, therefore, invokes consideration by the Public Service Commission, but it is not to be a controlling factor. In holding that customer preference was to be given weight in its determination (even more weight than in other cases because of the relatively short lines involved), the Commission erred; but understandably so, since its decision antedated our decision in Application of Montana-Dakota Utilities Co., supra . It is the public convenience and necessity, after all, with which the Commission is concerned, not private preference. See Tri-City Motor Transportation Co. v. Great Northern Ry. Co., 67 N.D. 119, 270 N.W. 100 (1936), quoting 42 C.J. Motor Vehicles, Section 121, page 687, as follows: The convenience and necessity which the law requires to support the public service commission's order for the establishment or extension of . . . service is the convenience and necessity of the public as distinguished from that of an individual or any number of individuals, and this is the primary matter to be considered in determining what constitutes such public convenience and necessity in a particular case, and the propriety of granting a certificate to that effect.