Two North Country power companies were fined by the state Public Services Commission for failing to meet customer service standards last year.

In a release on Thursday, the state PSC announced it had levied $23.5 million in fines on five utilities across New York this year because they did not provide adequate customer service, as determined by customer surveys. In the North Country, Liberty Utilities and National Grid were both fined.

Liberty Utilities, which also does business under the name St. Lawrence Gas, was fined $39,000. National Grid, which is the business name for the former Niagara Mohawk Power Corp., was fined $1.2 million.

For both utilities, those fines are automatically applied back to ratepayer bills by the companies themselves.

Additionally, the Central Hudson Gas and Electric Corp., New York State Electric and Gas Corp. and Rochester Gas and Electric Corp. were all fined as well, each getting fined millions of dollars.

“Our Office of Consumer Services staff conducted an in-depth review of the utilities’ successes or failures in meeting their respective customer service performance measures filed as required by each utility’s respective rate plan,” said PSC Chair Rory M. Christian. “Ensuring that the utilities operating in New York state maintain good customer service is a top priority for the commission. The negative rate adjustments being announced today are company financial enforcement payments for missing specified customer service metrics.”

Each corporation is evaluated on four specific metrics. National Grid, as Niagara Mohawk, failed to achieve a positive rating in a combined commercial and industrial customer service satisfaction survey. The company is meant to maintain a 78% approval rating, which it barely missed with a 77.9% actual approval rate. That resulted in three so-called “basis points” and a fine of $1.2 million.

Liberty Utilities, as St. Lawrence Gas, is required to maintain a 86% approval rating in a customer satisfaction survey. It achieved an 82% positive rating, resulting in 15 bias points and an $39,000 fine.

The worst performance last year, and the highest fines for this year, came from NYSEG, which provides electrical and gas service to parts of nearly every region in the state, including most of the southern tier, the Finger Lakes, the southern Mohawk Valley and around Plattsburgh. The company failed on all four metrics evaluated by the PSC; call answer rate, a customer satisfaction survey, accuracy of estimated bills and rate of complaints made to the PSC itself. The combination of failures led to 39.87 bias points and an $11.4 million fine.