Three dollars and ninety-three cents. That's what Pennsylvania regulators just added to a typical UGI gas bill, and it started yesterday. This is Power Bill. Oklahoma's biggest utility wants almost twenty-four dollars a month, Virginia gets ready to fight Appalachian Power, Minnesota's commission snaps at its own consumer watchdogs, and Ohio puts a price on getting your heat back this winter. We'll start in Pennsylvania. Hit follow so Monday's episode finds you.
From the PA Environment Digest:
Under this framework, the average monthly bill for a residential customer using 68.8 Ccf per month will increase by a total of $6.45 (5.7%) with a similar two-step phase-in – from $113.76 to $117.69, effective Oct. 1, 2026, and then from $117.69 to $120.21, effective Oct. 1, 2027.
So step one, $113.76 to $117.69. That's three ninety-three a month, on bills since yesterday. Step two next October, another two fifty-two. And look at what's growing inside it. The customer charge, the part you pay before you burn a single cubic foot of gas, goes from $16.25 to $19 now and $20 next year. To be fair to the settlement, UGI asked for a lot more: $9.91 a month in one shot, and a $23 customer charge. The Public Utility Commission voted 3 to 1 for a deal signed by the state's Office of Consumer Advocate and the PUC's own enforcement bureau. And UGI agreed not to file another base rate increase until at least January 15th, 2029. And one real win: households eligible through LIHEAP get automatic enrollment in UGI's assistance programs. And this covers UGI's pipes, not the gas itself. LancasterOnline notes the gas price can move again December 1st.
Chloe Bennett-Steele, writing for StateImpact Oklahoma on KGOU:
Regulators with the commission will spend months evaluating OG&E’s financials to determine whether the company can hike up its average residential base rate by $23.88 a month. That number could be different in some houses depending on electricity use.
Twenty-three eighty-eight a month. Oklahoma Energy Today puts the whole ask at $395 million, about a 14 percent total bill increase. Proposed, not approved. But that's a big number to file right after a summer of soaring temperatures and expensive bills. OG&E serves about 917,000 customers. It says the money covers reliability work, plus replacing two 60-year-old gas units at its Horseshoe Lake plant and other units at Tinker. Those projects were already preapproved; they just haven't hit bills yet. Earliest bill changes would come next spring. Then the sweetener. A bigger senior discount, a low-income discount you might get even if your LIHEAP money hasn't come through, a pilot to forgive past-due balances. Lovely. The senior discount is eighty-five dollars a year. That's about seven a month, against twenty-three eighty-eight. OG&E also says this case doesn't include costs tied to the three Google data centers it agreed to power. Its separate large-load tariff gets a public hearing expected in November.
Matt Busse, writing in Cardinal News:
APCo is asking regulators for permission to raise the average residential customer’s monthly bill by $9.10 in order to earn $61.4 million more per year, a 3.3% increase in revenue, starting no earlier than March 1.
Nine ten a month, on an average bill of about $168. And it's not alone. In a separate case, Appalachian Power wants another $3.99 a month for renewable energy projects, also starting March 1st. Put them together and it's about thirteen dollars. A big piece of this fight is profit. APCo wants its authorized return on equity raised from 9.75 to 10.5 percent. A witness for the Attorney General's consumer counsel, Ralph Smith, says at 9.325 percent the company would need $1.4 million more, not $61.4 million. And the State Corporation Commission's own staff says base revenue should go down, by $5.5 million. Staff also said no to raising the fixed basic service charge from $7.96 to $9. Good. That's a fee you pay no matter how carefully you use power. APCo's side: it says its actual return in 2024 and 2025 was about four point seven percent, and that without bond financing allowed by a 2025 state law, the request would be $8.38 a month higher. If you're one of APCo's roughly 466,000 residential customers, the public hearing is Monday, October 19th. Register by Thursday, October 15th, and you get five minutes. The final order is due by January 15th.
From KSTP 5 Eyewitness News:
In the recently approved rate case, Xcel’s ROE increased from 9.25% to 9.6%, an increase that will cost customers millions of dollars more, according to those watchdogs that pushed the commission to reconsider that — pointing to a huge amount of public comment opposing the rate increase, massive company profits, and families struggling to pay their bills.
And on Thursday, Minnesota's Public Utilities Commission unanimously refused to reconsider. Then vice-chair Joseph Sullivan said treating the decision as arbitrary and capricious was, his word, cynical. The Attorney General's office is required by law to represent residential customers there. Asking for reconsideration is the process working. The commission's case: the increase came in lower than the administrative law judge recommended, at about half of what Xcel asked for, below inflation, with wider bill-assistance eligibility. What nobody in this story gives us is a per-household number for that bump from 9.25 to 9.6. 'Millions of dollars' is the watchdogs' phrase. If the commission's this sure, put the monthly figure on the record. One thing to watch: Xcel says it will propose keeping electric base rates unchanged for two years. That's a proposal. Nothing's approved yet.
From WKTN radio in Kenton, Ohio:
Under the Special Reconnect Order, customers must pay the utility no more than $175 plus any applicable reconnection charge, which cannot exceed $36. If the utility’s reconnect charge is greater than $36, the balance above $36 may be charged to the customer on the customer’s next monthly bill.
So in Ohio, if your heat's been shut off, the most you pay upfront to get it back is $175, plus a reconnection fee capped at $36. Two hundred eleven dollars, tops. The window runs October 12th through April 16th. It's once per heating season, for PUCO-regulated utilities, with no income requirement. And households at or below 175 percent of federal income guidelines can apply to the HEAP winter crisis program to cover the $175. More than 227,000 Ohioans used it last winter. That's not a rare emergency. That's a whole city's worth of households getting cut off and paying to get back on. And the rest of the balance doesn't vanish. The utility sets up a payment plan for what's left. If you're behind, call your utility starting October 12th and ask about the Special Reconnect Order by name.
If you follow Power Bill, you might also like 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.
On our watch list: Maine parties have until Monday, October 5th, to respond on CMP's temporary rate request. Ohio's Special Reconnect Order opens October 12th. And Appalachian Power's public hearing is October 19th, with registration closing October 15th.
Links to every story are in the show notes, so dig into the ones that caught your attention. That's Power Bill for this week. We'll be back Monday. This is a Lantern Podcast.