Under the commission’s decision, an average PSE residential electric customer using 1000kWh a month will see an increase of about $2.80, and the average natural gas customer using 70 therms a month will pay about 87 cents more.
These rate hikes are in addition to amounts approved by the UTC for funding PSE’s conservation programs. Those amounts are $1.78 more a month for residential electric customers and 45 cents extra for natural gas customers. Including both increases the average residential customers’ monthly bill will rise to about $97 for electricity and $80 for natural gas service.
The utility originally asked the commission to increase its annual revenues by more than $148m, or 7.4% for electric service, and nearly $27.2m, or 2.2%, for natural gas service.
The UTC also agreed to raise the basic service charge for PSE’s electric customers to $7.25 a month from the current $7 charge. The basic service charge for natural gas customers will remain the same at $10 a month.
Among several power-supply projects the commission deemed prudent are a 311MW natural gas-fired generating plant called Mint Farm in Longview and an expansion of the Wild Horse wind project outside of Ellensburg. The UTC also agreed with the utility’s sale of the White River hydropower assets.
The commission excluded some PSE-requested expenses for salary increases and special retirement accounts for high-level executives. Other expenses disallowed by the UTC include estimated property tax calculations and some power-supply costs.
Bellevue-based PSE serves approximately one million electric customers and about 750,000 natural gas customers, primarily in the Puget Sound region of Washington.
