In Eastern Washington, the people who are supposed to check a utility's math looked at a request for seventeen dollars a month more on the average home bill. Their answer was, roughly, sure, most of it. You're listening to Power Bill. It's Thursday, October twenty-second. Coming up: Avista's rate case gets to the finish line in Washington, Pennsylvania regulators vote on whether to rein in retail electricity suppliers, and Redding, California asks for two more years of increases. One tap on follow, and we'll be back in your ears before you know it.
Troy Slack, writing in The Spokesman-Review:
In final briefs filed Monday, staff for the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission supported a $104.3 million electric increase for 2027, only about 5% less than the $110 million Avista is seeking. Under Avista’s original request, the average residential electric bill would rise $17.21 a month from $124.23 to $141.44.
So the commission's own staff landed about five percent below the utility. On the bill, the Spokesman says staff's plan raises it about 13 percent, roughly the same as what Avista asked for. To be clear, staff is one party, and this is a recommendation, not an order. The commission must decide by December 15, and Avista wants new rates January 1. The real fight is over profit. Avista wants a 10.2 percent allowed return on equity. Staff says 9.625, a bit under the 9.8 Avista gets now. An industrial customer group says 9. And public counsel, the unit of the attorney general's office that represents homes and small businesses, says 7.2. Public counsel also pointed to analyst reports that Avista filed itself, which show the company expects to earn about 9 percent over the long term. Attorney General Nick Brown told the paper that because customers have no other choice, it's reasonable for the state to demand a smaller increase. Avista disputes how public counsel calculated its number. And look at what's in the request. Five million dollars from the 2023 Palouse gas outage, plus costs the paper lists as private jets, legal fees, attorney general subpoena costs and industry dues. Here's who's paying. Of the 238 written comments the commission got, 232 opposed the increase. One man told regulators he and his wife live on Social Security, and the increase is going to break them. For Avista's Washington electric customers, the date to circle is December 15.
Charlotte Keith, reporting for Spotlight PA:
In 2025, the data show, residential customers served by an alternative supplier paid almost $82 million more than if they had stayed with the utility — even after accounting for customers who saved money. Suppliers raised various objections to the data, but the administrative law judges overseeing the case rejected their arguments.
Quick background: Pennsylvania households can buy supply from a retail supplier instead of the utility's default service. These numbers are FirstEnergy Pennsylvania's, from its filings. It serves more than two million customers as Met-Ed, Penelec, Penn Power and West Penn Power. And it's not only about price. FirstEnergy's data show customers with a retail supplier were nine times more likely to have their power shut off. From 2022 to 2025, shopping customers were about 18 percent of customers but caused 40 percent of the uncollectible debt. And here's the part that should bother everyone else: under the current program, ratepayers ultimately cover debt that can't be collected. What FirstEnergy is proposing: when a supplier contract ends and the customer does nothing, they go back to default service, not into a new contract with new prices. Suppliers would also have to confirm every three months that customers on variable rates agreed to them. And only suppliers priced at or below default service when a customer signs up could sell their accounts to the utility. Suppliers hate it. The Retail Energy Supply Association says the answer can't be to shut down the market and take away people's choice. On the other side, the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project, which represents low-income customers, says the changes would close loopholes suppliers use to raise prices and confuse people. The administrative law judges recommended adopting FirstEnergy's changes back in August, but that isn't binding. The commission takes it up at its public meeting today, and in recent years it has rejected narrower versions of this in other utilities' cases. If approved, the changes start June 1, 2027, and only for FirstEnergy customers. If you shop in Pennsylvania, don't wait for the vote. Find the end date on your contract and compare your price on papowerswitch dot com.
From an announcement by the City of Redding's Electric Utility:
For the average residential customer using 800 kWh per month, the proposal would add approximately $10 per month in each of the first two years.
The details. Redding Electric Utility, which the city owns, wants 6 percent increases in 2027 and again in 2028, with the first one starting on the January 1, 2027 billing cycle. The utility says that's about 12 percent over three years, versus 13.5 in the plan it shelved this year. Remember, that's the utility grading its own homework. Its main reason is power costs, which it expects to rise by more than twenty million dollars a year and top a hundred million by 2030. The piece I'd circle is the discount program. The city would raise the income limit for its Residential Energy Discount from 60 to 80 percent of Shasta County's median income. About 3,600 households get it now. For discount customers using 500 kilowatt-hours, the utility puts the increase at 45 cents a month the first year and 21 cents the second. I'm usually the one saying these affordability programs vanish under the base-rate hike. If those numbers hold, this one doesn't. But everyone above 80 percent of median income gets the full ten dollars, twice. Nothing is approved. The first public workshop is tonight at Redding City Hall, and the city council hearing is Tuesday, November 17.
If you've ever wondered who's driving all this demand on the grid, try our sister show, The Data Center Daily. It's a daily briefing on AI compute: hyperscaler capex, the power grid, semiconductor supply, and energy markets reshaped by intelligence at scale. Search for The Data Center Daily in your podcast app.
To sum up: a December 15 deadline for Avista in Washington, a vote today in Harrisburg on FirstEnergy's supplier rules, and a November 17 hearing in Redding. Power Bill comes to you from Lantern Podcasts. We're back tomorrow.