Utility to host customer meetings amid shock over electricity rate hikes

Hundreds of Rocky Mountain Power customers in the state have taken to social media to vent their frustration and ask why their monthly bills have skyrocketed.

Customers will soon have a chance to pose those questions about what’s driving a recent spate of electric rate hikes in Wyoming in person at a series of public meetings hosted by Rocky Mountain Power next week in Laramie, Casper and Rock Springs.

The increases are significant — inflating monthly bills by about 15% so far this year. The company, which serves some 144,000 households and businesses in the state, wants to add another 14.7% increase to monthly bills — and it is sure to find an impassioned audience at its meetings next week.

Casper resident Melissa Matheson recently posted on the Casper Business Rants and Raves Facebook page, “Holy hell, that [Rocky Mountain Power] increase is a gut punch. Damn! And they’ve already requested another?!?!?”

Her post generated 90 comments. Another Facebook post on the topic generated more than 160 comments — most of them from Wyoming residents concerned about their pocketbooks and wondering why the regulated monopoly utility is allowed to impose such large rate increases.

“I got my bill in August and I was just like, ‘Oh my goodness.’ It was much higher than I’d ever seen it before,” Matheson told WyoFile, adding that she’s a single mother who relies on electric baseboard heaters in one portion of her “older home.”

“I’m really blessed,” Matheson said. “Today, I have a good job … But if something like this had happened before I had finished school and before I got into the line of work that I’m in now, it would have absolutely crushed me.”

Series of rate hikes

Rocky Mountain Power, Wyoming’s largest electric utility, is part of billionaire Warren Buffet’s PacifiCorp, which operates in six western states. The company drew outrage from Wyoming ratepayers and elected officials last year when it proposed a historic 29.2% rate increase , listing investments in renewable energy generation and increasing costs related to fossil fuels to justify the hike.

Though the Wyoming Public Service Commission pared the rate hike request to a 5.5% increase in January, Rocky Mountain Power was permitted to add an $86.4 million, one-time fuel cost adjustment to ratepayer bills in July — a 9.3% increase that is “subject to refund” because regulators may retroactively adjust it later this year or in January.

Now, the company has applied to state regulators for an additional 14.7% rate hike, tapping its Wyoming customers for an extra $123.5 million annually. This time, the drivers behind the request include $52.7 million to cover Wyoming’s share of new wind farms and the Gateway South and Gateway West interstate transmission lines connecting new wind energy in the state to markets in the southwest.

The other major driver behind Rocky Mountain Power’s latest rate hike proposal is liability insurance related to more frequent and intense wildfires across the West due to human-caused climate change.

Rocky Mountain Power’s parent company, PacifiCorp, could end up paying billions of dollars in various settlements for its liability in 2020 wildfires in Oregon . Those settlements, as well as the insurance industry’s response to electric utility liabilities for sparking wildfires, could potentially be passed on to ratepayers. Wyoming lawmakers are weighing how to potentially limit such liabilities , which industry analysts say could bankrupt some utilities and throw economies into disarray.

Rocky Mountain Power president Dick Garlish has testified before Wyoming lawmakers that, as a monopoly utility, it also has an obligation to provide the lowest cost, most reliable electrical service possible, and that requires upgrading aging infrastructure and investing in new facilities that — after initial investments are paid off — will help it meet those mandates, along with increasingly more stringent environmental standards. That’s difficult in a policy and economic environment that is going through rapid and historic changes.

“We recognize the impact that the rising costs of providing electric service has on customers,” Garlish said in a prepared statement earlier this month.

Customer meetings

Regulated electric utilities are not required to host customer forums when requesting a rate hike. However, Public Service Commission Chair Mary Throne admonished then Rocky Mountain Power president Gary Hoogeveen in October for not including Wyoming customers in the company’s outreach efforts regarding its proposed 29.2% rate hike in 2023. The company, however, did meet directly with its largest Wyoming customers — which includes a coalition of oil, natural gas and trona producers and refiners — as well as city councils and other local governments.

Instead, it was the Public Service Commission that took the unusual step of conducting five public comment hearings — prompted by the significance of the large rate hike request and a flood of public inquiries to the commission, Throne noted in October.

In response, the company held a series of customer forums in Wyoming in May regarding its proposed fuel-cost adjustment. The utility will host three customer meetings in Wyoming next week regarding its latest rate increase proposal. The company will provide information about why it is seeking rate increases, answer customer questions and accept customer input. However, any material changes to Rocky Mountain Power’s rate request “would most likely result from updated financial analysis or other evidence from the litigation process with regulators and intervenors,” Rocky Mountain Power spokesman David Eskelsen said.

° Laramie: Monday, from 2-4 p.m. for industrial customers, and 4-7 p.m. for residential and commercial customers, at the Hilton Garden Inn, 2229 Grand Avenue.

° Casper : Tuesday, from 2-4 p.m. for industrial customers, and 4-7 p.m. for residential and commercial customers, at the Ramkota Hotel & Conference Center, 800 N. Poplar Street.

° Rock Springs : Thursday, from 2-4 p.m. for industrial customers, and 4-7 p.m. for residential and commercial customers, at the Holiday Inn, 1675 Sunset Drive.

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