Two Florida utilities, same October bills, opposite directions. And I'm not convinced the one going down is the good news. This is Power Bill. Winter Park's hike, Jacksonville's dip, a Caribbean fuel surcharge with no brakes, and a reform pitch I've got questions for. Cassidy, start in Winter Park. Hit follow and you won't have to come looking for the next episode. Spectrum News 13, with Keith Landry:
Under the approved rate increase, someone paying $300 per month for electricity in Winter Park could see a $23 per month increase, or about $276 per year if their usage were the same each month. City Commissioner Kris Cruzada says the rate increase will help pay to continue undergrounding cables, maintain substations, improve transformers and replace meters.
Winter Park, Wednesday night: the city commission votes a 7.7 percent electric increase, starting next month. The headline example is a household paying three hundred a month, so twenty-three bucks more. Who's paying three hundred? Run it on a hundred-fifty-dollar bill, a senior in a small place, and it's about eleven-fifty. Smaller number, bigger bite. And listen to what the money's actually for. Commissioner Kris Cruzada lists undergrounding cables, substations, transformers, meters. That's capital work, recovered through the base rate, twelve months a year. Then he says, quote-unquote, as energy goes up, we may need to raise our rates. So which is it? Fuel, or poles in the ground? It matters, because fuel moves back down. Infrastructure recovery doesn't. Winter Park runs its own municipal utility, so residents pay the city directly. My question's simple: did anyone put a per-household impact number in front of commissioners before the vote, or did twenty-three dollars first show up in the TV coverage? Mine's whether that vote carried any break for low-income customers at all. Because water and wastewater went up 4.46 percent in the same budget. Same household, two bills, one Wednesday. Zion Decoteau, writing in Action News Jax:
Power plants burn fossil fuels to generate electricity. That ties into another key reason for the rate changes: Plant Vogtle, outside Augusta, Georgia. “Plant Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia provides clean energy to JEA customers,” JEA spokeswoman Karen McAllister said. “Our debt obligation to Plant Vogtle is one of the main factors in terms of our rate adjustments.”
So Jacksonville gets the feel-good line of the day. Electric bills down eight-seventy in October... compared to April. April. The month fuel peaked. Pick the worst month of the year as your yardstick and almost anything looks like relief. And on that same bill, same usage, water and sewer go up five seventy-five. So net, a typical household's closer to two ninety-five a month better off. Not eight-seventy. And then JEA's own spokeswoman, Karen McAllister, says their debt on Plant Vogtle, the nuclear plant in Georgia, is one of the main factors in these adjustments. So Jacksonville families are paying down a reactor, and it's riding in the same announcement as a fuel cut. Same week Winter Park, the other city-owned system we just covered, went the opposite way. The fuel piece falls when fuel falls. It climbs right back the month oil doesn't cooperate. The Vogtle obligation doesn't budge either way, and I'd want it as its own line on the bill. JEA's tip is setting the thermostat to seventy-eight. Fine advice. It won't touch the reactor debt. Here's Cherry Ann Gaillard-Williams at Saint Lucia Daily Post:
The warning comes as the Fuel Surcharge Cost Adjustment on September bills climbs to 35.6 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), its highest level this year. The increase reflects fuel purchased in August, when average international oil prices rose to approximately US$91 per barrel — about US$7 higher than in July. LUCELEC attributed the jump to geopolitical uncertainty and continued disruptions in global energy markets.
Saint Lucia's the version with no cushion at all. September bills carry a fuel surcharge of 35.6 cents a kilowatt-hour. The previous 2026 high was 31 cents, back in May. Put that in a household's terms. At two hundred kilowatt-hours a month, the surcharge alone is about seventy-one dollars before the base rate even shows up. And it's August's fuel. The oil LUCELEC bought at ninety-one dollars a barrel is what's landing on this month's bill. And the hedge? Managing director Gilroy Pultie says they covered about forty-five percent of fuel through October. That took the price from $15.16 a gallon to $14.87. Twenty-nine cents. For a family watching that bill, that's about two percent of protection. Same mechanism as the JEA cut we just walked through, pointed the other way. LUCELEC says October could go higher, and it promises any fuel savings get passed through. That door swings both directions, and the customer finds out after the fuel's already bought. Okay, when a utility says rates are changing, does that always mean my whole bill's going up? And how do I tell if it's actually approved, just proposed, or a short-term fuel charge? Not always. Start with the bill itself. It's got the electricity you use, delivery charges, taxes, other line items, so one piece changing doesn't mean the whole thing changed. Consumer Reports points out the fine print can break out usage, delivery fees and taxes separately. Then there's approved versus proposed. Approved means regulators signed off. Proposed is still just the utility asking, and it can get revised or rejected. Central Maine Power, for example, was seeking a change that could lower bills about four dollars over the summer, but the Portland Press Herald framed that as the company's proposal, not a done deal. And a fuel adjustment clause is a different animal from a full base-rate case. It's how the utility squares actual fuel costs against what it projected. In Indiana, AES customers using 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month were set for a net $9.52 increase from June through August because of higher winter fuel costs, and WFYI Public Media reported it was explicitly temporary. So if my total jumps, I shouldn't stop at whether rates rose. I should be asking which line item moved, and whether it's got an end date? Exactly. Look for the name of the charge, the effective dates, and whether the notice says the utility is “seeking” a change or regulators have approved one. A temporary fuel pass-through can raise bills for a set stretch. A proposed rate plan stays up in the air until the commission acts. And bill credits can pull the total the other way for a while, which Rhode Island customers have seen. Here's Herman K. Trabish at Utility Dive:
While the traditional way of setting rates in many states, including Michigan, ties a utility’s allowed profit to its capital expenditures, PBR links it to specific outcomes. PBR first emerged as an alternative model in the 1980s, but lately has seen a surge in interest as electricity prices outpace inflation and public anger over utility profits grows.
"Affordability concerns drive momentum." I've seen that exact phrase in rate filings, and it rarely survives contact with the bill. Michigan's commission put multi-year plans with performance-based ratemaking at the top of its list back in July, and it still needs the legislature to change state law before a single Michigan bill moves. And here's why it matters after Winter Park. Under the traditional model Utility Dive describes, a utility's profit tracks what it spends on capital. Undergrounding, substations, meters. PBR tries to pay for outcomes instead. Outcomes picked by whom, though? Chair Scripps says a "well-designed" plan could deliver. Every one of those metrics gets negotiated in a room where the utility brings a legal team and the ratepayer advocate brings two people and a laptop. Show me one PBR state where low-income shutoffs actually went down. That's a real test. Mine's narrower: if the metric says affordability, I want it in dollars per household per month, published before the vote. Otherwise it's a bonus the utility helps grade. Meanwhile Colorado regulators are deciding Black Hills' 8.8 percent ask by March, under the old capex-to-profit model. Reform talk in Lansing doesn't do much for a Pueblo household this winter. If you follow Power Bill, you may also enjoy The Data Center Daily, a daily briefing on AI compute, hyperscaler capex, the power grid, semiconductor supply, and energy markets reshaped by intelligence at scale. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
Here's what we're watching. JEA's electric decrease and water-sewer increase hit October 1 bills. Winter Park's approved 7.7 percent electric increase starts showing up next month. And LUCELEC's October fuel surcharge could climb above September's 35.6 cents per kWh. Links to every story are in the show notes, so check out the ones that caught your attention. That's Power Bill for today. Until the next episode, this is a Lantern Podcast.