Forty-two dollars a month. That's what Puerto Rico's new record electric rate adds to a typical household bill, and it's already in effect. This is Power Bill. Also today, Baltimore takes BGE's rate request door to door, Puget Sound Energy customers pack a hearing room, Rhode Island bills pick up a credit, and the Philippines narrows who's protected from shutoffs. We'll start in San Juan. Hit follow so tomorrow's episode finds you.
From The Associated Press:
A residential customer that consumes 800 kilowatt-hours a month will see the monthly bill rise about 18%, from $229 to $271, according to Puerto Rico’s Energy Bureau, which approved the increase.
Two twenty-nine to two seventy-one. That's forty-two dollars a month, starting Thursday, October 1st, on an island where more than forty percent of residents live in poverty. And it stays in place until at least December 31st. This is the fuel charge we've been tracking. LUMA asked for more than six cents a kilowatt-hour. The Energy Bureau approved 5.28 cents. That puts the rate at 33.86 cents, against a mainland residential average of 18.3 cents, according to the EIA. LUMA says it doesn't make a dime extra on this. It blames summer heat, oil prices tied to the Middle East conflict, more customer battery use, and burning pricier fuel when the plants come up short. The Bureau did hold some back. It didn't pass along seventeen point six million dollars tied to what it called alleged failures by New Fortress Energy to supply fuel from June to August. In its words, fuel costs must not be automatically passed on to the consumer simply because they were incurred or billed. So the regulator trimmed the edges, and households still got the record. And it lands right after a substation fire last week knocked out power to more than two hundred thousand customers.
Ellie Buckheit, reporting for FOX45 News in Baltimore:
According to the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel (OPC), the average BGE customer could pay about $100 more per year if the proposal is approved in full.
Our math, not theirs: a hundred dollars a year is a little over eight dollars a month. BGE is asking the Public Service Commission for a hundred fifty-six million dollars more in revenue. It's proposed, not approved. And the People's Counsel says that if it's approved in full, BGE's distribution rates would be fifty-eight percent higher than in 2020, and a hundred twenty-nine percent higher than when Exelon bought BGE in 2012. City Council President Zeke Cohen spent Saturday knocking on doors in Allendale, collecting petition signatures. His line: safety and reliability matter, but neither one is a blank check written by Baltimore ratepayers. Cohen also says nearly a quarter of the increase would go to shareholders, and that the state's consumer advocate concluded rates should go down. BGE says its plan is the minimum work necessary to keep the lights on, and that deferring it would mean more outages and higher costs later. Then BGE points at PJM supply prices, which it says have risen more in two years than its distribution rate has in fifteen. Fine. That's an argument for fixing supply. It's not an argument for eight more dollars on delivery. This comes days after the commission ended the multi-year rate plan pilot we covered Saturday. Evidentiary hearings are expected to begin Friday, November 6th, and public comment hearings are planned.
Aspen Ford, writing for the Washington State Standard in the Ellensburg Daily Record:
Washington’s largest utility is asking regulators to approve an increase in electricity rates by 29.3% and gas rates by 19.8% over the next three years. It’s also asking to increase its allowed return on equity, or profit that shareholders earn on their investment, from 9.9% to 10.8%.
And that's on top of electric rates that already went up 18.85 percent this year. Consumer Reports has put the full plan at about six hundred twelve dollars a year for a typical electric customer by 2029. That's roughly fifty-one dollars a month. What's new is the public record. About a hundred people spoke at a four-hour hearing in Lacey, with a line out the door. Becky Foster, from Thurston County, said she already pays around six hundred dollars a month for energy in winter, and that she's paying more than fifty percent over what she paid two years ago. Here's what I can't square. Nearly a billion dollars for PSE's gas distribution system. Converting the shut-down Centralia plant to gas. Two planned gas-turbine projects. All of it recovered from ratepayers. Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman called Centralia a very bad use of ratepayer dollars. PSE's side: its power supply costs have tripled since 2019, and it says it recognizes higher bills are difficult, but the cost of safe, reliable energy has risen significantly. The next chance to comment is Wednesday, October 7th. The three commissioners will accept, reject, or modify the plan in early January.
Elizabeth Blessing, writing for Main Street Dollars:
Electric accounts are scheduled to start seeing $14.51 a month with the October billing cycle, while gas accounts start seeing $51.55 a month in December.
A flat credit on the bill. No form, no application. Twelve months at fourteen fifty-one on electric, a hundred seventy-four dollars and twelve cents in all. Five months at fifty-one fifty-five on gas, through April. That's two hundred fifty-seven seventy-five. Where the money comes from: PPL's 2022 purchase of the company from National Grid. The credits offset acquisition-related costs instead of carrying them in rates. They sit alongside a rate case that approved smaller electric and gas distribution increases than the company requested, with new rates in effect since September 1st. And nothing in the reporting turns those increases into a per-household number. So we can tell you exactly what the credit is worth, but not what it's offsetting. Two cautions. These are the company's filed terms, and as of Sunday the docket didn't show a separate order approving the credit tariff. And the credit attaches to active billed accounts, so if you move, the remaining months don't come with you. On your October electric bill, look for a fourteen fifty-one line labeled miscellaneous bill credit.
Maria Bernadette Romero, reporting for the Daily Tribune in Manila:
ERC Chairman and CEO Saturnino Juan told reporters at the sidelines of the ASEAN Energy Business Forum in Pasay City that the agency will extend the no-disconnection policy from November to December, but only for residential customers consuming 200 kWh or less monthly.
So right now, nobody in the Philippines can be cut off over unpaid August, September or October bills, households or businesses. Starting in November, that shrinks to households using two hundred kilowatt-hours a month or less. Juan says the commission has already agreed on the change and will issue it this month. The reason: utilities and electric cooperatives said large commercial and industrial customers weren't paying on time, and that squeezed the cash they need to pay suppliers and the grid operator, NGCP. That's a fair complaint about factories. But a family using two hundred and one kilowatt-hours isn't a factory. And they lose the protection too. Juan's reason for keeping small households covered: the situation is really difficult right now, and power rates are still going up. The relief began under Executive Order 110, after the national energy emergency tied to the Middle East conflict. If you're over the line and behind, call your utility this month.
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's commission takes up CMP's temporary rate request tomorrow, Tuesday, October 6th. Puget Sound Energy's next public comment opportunity is Wednesday, October 7th. And BGE's evidentiary hearings are expected to begin Friday, November 6th.
Links to every story are in the show notes, so dig into the ones that caught your attention. That's Power Bill for today. We'll be back tomorrow. This is a Lantern Podcast.