Rocky Mountain Power defends rate increase

SALT LAKE CITY — During a Utah Senate committee meeting Wednesday, Rocky Mountain Power President Dick Garlish told legislators why the company needs to increase rates.

“Everybody is facing increased costs, and there's different drivers for that,” he said. “There's the general inflationary environment that we're in, there is the challenge of dealing with weather and the changes in the system.”

Garlish said RMP’s insurance costs have gone way up.

“Banks and lending institutions are just viewing the utility sector as a whole as more inherently risky than it had previously been, either because of wildfire concerns or recovery concerns,” he said.

Many Utahns, like Stan Holmes with Utah Citizens Advocating Renewable Energy, are skeptical.

“PacifiCorp [RMP's parent company] seems to be in flux right now,” he said. “There's a back-and-forth between Pacific Power states and between the Rocky Mountain Power states.”

RMP is proposing raising rates $3.35 per kilowatt hour for an average Utah home, which comes out to about a 30 percent increase.

“We are very reliable,” said Garlish. “We are going through a challenge right now with wildfire and trying to figure out how to manage that with our communities and partnering with our communities to do that. But we care about our customers. We want to provide the service, and we want to do it well, and we're not trying to punish our customers in any way possible.”

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